“Hicks. . . is winningly deft with language. From the opening paragraph, neither commas nor em dashes can rein in his enthusiasm for the craft of storytelling, which Hicks embraces with contagious energy and sharp humor.”
—New York Times Sunday Book Review
“[A] sprightly tale about friendship and courtship, money, love, assorted complications—and writers. Felicitous characters and a scrumptious plot make Hicks’s second novel refreshing and fun.”
—Kirkus, starred review
“A sharply observed and very funny novel. . . . [Hicks] has perfect pitch.”
—The Guardian
“An improbable and wildly enjoyable mix of a comedy of manners, a road-trip story, and a slacker coming-of-age tale. . . . It is Hicks’s ear for dialogue, humor, and detail that makes the novel shine.”
—Booklist
“Hicks does a near-perfect job tracing each character’s evolving needs, desires and resentments over the course of seven years.”
—The Los Angeles Times
“These plot lines . . . are meticulously woven together to create for the reader a sensation of precarious narrative convergence."
—Brooklyn Rail
“The setup of Hicks’s novel is the stuff of classic comic fiction; the minute details and anxieties that surround its characters, however, are what endures.”
—The Star Tribune
“Supremely elegant, accurately human, unceasingly funny. . . . Amateurs is a sublime literary treat by our hinterland Anthony Powell. In a kinder world, there would be a new book by ‘Hicksy’ every year.”
—Ed Park, author of Personal Days
