Dorothy Allison, from the preface
You have here a ring of gold, a reflection of the mental landscape of an extraordinary writer and an astonishingly brave woman. This is a map of the changing world, the world that changed as Nicola became the writer she is, and the world we all share that has changed as so many women and queers and deeply unique outlaw voices began to speak all the stories not told before.

Paul Di Filippo, Asimov's
...a life story wittily and bracingly told: brave, forthright, illuminating, passionate, rueful, and celebratory. If you melded Alison Bechdel's Fun Home with Aldiss's The Twinkling of an Eye and Delany's The Motion of Light in Water, you might come up with a similar tale of a wild girl with literary sensibilities.

Malinda Lo, AfterEllen.com
This ain't your Mama's memoir.

Colleen Mondor, Bookslut
Somewhere out there a pissed off seventeen-year-old is looking for a reason to believe in the future; give her Griffith's book and she will know she's not alone, she will know that what happens next might just might make this whole growing up nightmare worth it.

Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times
The Seattle novelist ("Always") takes an unusual approach to autobiography with this "Party," which comes in a box containing five chapbook-memoirs of her English girlhood and wild youth, a CD of songs performed by Griffith (both solo and with her 1980s band Janes Plane), three scratch-and-sniff cards, an autographed baby picture, replicas of her childhood drawings, and more.

Gary Wolfe, Locus
[R]emarkable...a do-it-yourself Nicola Griffith home assembly kit...oddly hypnotic, as if someone we barely knew had taken us up into her attic to rummage around in old trunks while telling fascinating stories about each artifact...fiercely honest...'I'm a writer,' she tells us early on, and she seems fascinated with the archaeology of that statement. By the end, so are we, and we're convinced of its deep truth.

Jeff VanderMeer, Amazon.com
[A]mbitious and satisfying, this memoir of a writer's formative years crackles with intelligence, wit, and pathos. Griffith's essays about sexuality and her writing are often funny, and always insightful. This box of a book is another shining example of twenty-first-century book-making, and a delight to own.

James Sallis, F&SF
Lots of vivid writing here, and no apologies. And over all, that one single thing a writer most often and thoroughly thrashes about in the cane thicket trying to find: a clear voice.

Awards

• winner, Lambda Literary Award