"Many modernizers blame the people for being too 'backward' to sustain a super-modern, forward-moving dictator who wanted to force the country to become another Sweden within a decade."
"By seizing on the forward-moving nature of technology, the president invited us to look past the present moment and imagine a different tomorrow."
"It's her ability to record what she experiences as the loss of her central identity, Wife of Ray Smith, while maintaining a gripping, forward-moving narrative that reminds us of her public identity as Joyce Carol Oates, the master storyteller."