The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions - Reviews

"Agitated, angry, inventive, iconoclastic, both literally and figuratively graphic, the real Jiri Cech would both revere and rape Emily Dickinson, then bottle all the blue flies she ever imagined and make a balm to annoint the body of his beloved. Or at least the object of his desire.
Here is a series of tales, in varying keys, of intoxication and revenge, intoxication with whatever seduces, revenge for being seduced. An oblique memoir of family, an investigation of a mother's misplaced life, flirtation with self-advertisement in the manner of supermarket tabloids, and above all the Chronicles of Jiri Cech, seducer supreme, rogue chauvinist, lover and enemy. Beware, reader, you're in for a sumptuous, hypertextual, hypercharged ride. Hyperion himself would smile."
-- David Hamilton, Editor, The Iowa Review

"Debra Di Blasi's The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions is chaotic, brilliant and, like Jirí Cêch himself, possibly quite mad. With frenetic energy, Di Blasi mixes personal narrative with ad copy, traditional fiction with newspaper clippings, email messages, reportage, collage, and scholarship. The resulting concoction is consistently surprising, challenging, invigorating, and, most surprisingly of all, often deeply moving. Di Blasi has a mind unlike anyone else writing fiction today, and this is her finest work yet."
-- Kevin Prufer, editor of Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing

"In Di Blasi's visual rhapsody, time passing is us fucking, killing, and betraying each other; time stalled is our obsessive concern with the head of the spear. All our furies-fathers, the way roots rot, the puzzle of cross words, fathers-dance on the head of a pin, till we can't help but laugh. Rage, cradled in Di Blasi's brilliant hands, grows gorgeous. Mothers and trees from photos fade, and we enjoy an exquisite lack of orgasm, sobriety...and bears."
--Kass Fleisher, author of "Accidental Species: A Reproduction"

"In clear, resonant prose, laced with bittersweet humor, Di Blasi imparts her understanding of love's multiple ironies."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Both Di Blasi's style and her objective distance and comprehension of her chosen subject mark her as a very psychologically driven, very talented writer."
--Publishers Weekly

"Debra Di Blasi writes about love with thrilling originality and insight." --Robert Olen Butler, 1993 Pulitzer Prize winner for A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain

"Di Blasi...is young, brash, hard-nosed, and talented...."
--Voices in Italian Americana

"Erotic, earthy, humorous, sometimes shocking, always engaging." --George Gurley, The Kansas City Star

"Di Blasi is a bold talent and succeeds in a teasingly abrupt style."   --BookLovers