"Not since Richard Russo's 2001 novel, Empire Falls, which won the Pulitzer Prize, have I enjoyed the company of such memorable characters." -Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today. Feb. 6, 2003.[4]
"Explored, exposed and cherished if not by each other than at least, unmistakably, by their author, these creatures wrench their vanished time and place into the modern mind with such force as to displace everything else -- not only during the hours and days spent reading about them, but in their interstices and the aftermath as well." -Anneli Rufus, San Francisco Chronicle. Feb. 2, 2003.[5]
"The Master Butchers Singing Club is an ambitious novel, covering 36 years and several points of view. Too ambitious perhaps, because Erdrich can't keep up with her own agenda: she has created an array of colorful people but not one credible character, except possibly for the troubled, appealing Cyprian."–Brooke Allen, New York Times. Feb. 9, 2003.[6]
"It is a measure of Ms. Erdrich's poise as a writer, her understanding of her characters' inclinations and dreams that she is able to make such developments feel not like the contrivances of a novelist playing God but like the inevitable workings of a random but oddly symmetrical fate." –Michiko Kakutani, New York Times. Feb. 4, 2003.[7]
