“[Firstman’s] genre-bending memoir explores parent-child relationships, evolution and life as we know it.”
—Buzzfeed

“Firstman’s characterization of family dynamics is pitch-perfect: her own impatience and frustrations with her father balance his foibles and thoughtlessness—and her humor softens the lot. This is a very endearing book, a summer read for the curious mind.”
—The Paris Review

“This reflective memoir examines an odd and estranged father through the lens of his scientific expertise.”
—Shelf Awareness

“Firstman is ready to give the raw emotions surrounding her relationships with her parents narrative form, utilizing storytelling, science, and the quirks of a 1970s upbringing to make sense of a childhood less than ordinary.”
—River Teeth

"[A] unique debut [that] easily stands out among memoirs because it is as much about considering the world around us as it is about one very interesting father-daughter relationship."
—Booklist

“It turns out that the search for the origins of the universe can be a risky deal. We don’t always like what we find. Carole Firstman, with grace and elegance and wildness and terror, pushes into that essential mystery and emerges with compassion for what still haunts us—a scorpion, a letter, a father—as well a glimmer of insight, or at least acceptance, into why we do the things we do.”
—Nick Flynn, author ofMy Feelings andAnother Bullshit Night in Suck City

“Firstman takes her reader into the uncertain liminal spaces of her life and relationships, and as with the best memoir writing, often exposes in the process the reader’s own unexplored emotional territory.”—Steven Church, author ofOne with the Tiger: On Savagery and Intimacy

“Firstman takes us deep into the human heart [...] her clear-eyed and sympathetic writing transcends science to engage the elusive complexity of truth, the means and ends of human experience."
—John Hales, author ofShooting Polaris: A Personal Survey in the American West

“A saddening but ultimately redeeming memoir.”
--Kirkus Reviews