"
We Sinners is remarkably funny for a book about a deeply religious family grappling with loss of faith. . . It's impossible not to like these characters, so beautifully drawn, and so very loving to one another."
--Los Angeles Times "[A] nuanced portrait of an unnuanced world." —
The New York Times "Captivating . . . The beauty of
We Sinners lies in its extraordinary ordinariness." —
Washington Independent Review of Books "[A] spare, quietly devastating novel." —
The Boston Globe "In some ways, the Rovaniemi family is like ordinary American families, with sibling rivalries,
birth order issues and parental expectations. But the questions about faith—how it binds the family together but also mutates and divides it—elevate it beyond the confines of the traditional domestic novel and into a resonant and magical work of imagination."—
The Chicago Tribune "A beautiful, understated novel. [Pylväinen] tells a sophisticated, precise story about the nature and need for rebellion, set off against our need to belong.
We Sinners hums with rare respect for religious outsiders." —
Cleveland Plain Dealer "In
We Sinners, Pylvainen deftly explores this dance between oppression and liberation, between belief and unbelief, and shows the gray areas. These are not polarities but gradations of human experience. We all move in and out of various communities and belief systems, searching for love and acceptance. Often we search for forgiveness. This novel shows that sometimes it’s found in strange places." —
The Wichita Eagle "Characters who could be painted in grand strokes as villains or angels are small, fragile, and very human. We Sinners brilliantly, unforgettably reconfigures Tolstoy’s adage about happy and unhappy families: ‘happy and unhappy, every family is.’" —Publishers Weekly, Galley Talk
