Counterpoint 2007
Barnes and Noble Discovery Selection

"The Border of Truth" is such a good novel that it could also be any American's story" --LA Times

“The family mystery builds to a climax, the revelations of love, guilt, betrayal, loss, and denial are haunting.” --Booklist

"A rich, multilayered story" --Library Journal

Redel moves us back and forth between the present day and 1940, and once again (as in her novel Loverboy) makes a psychologically complex book matter-of-fact and mesmerizing. –More Magazine

LOVERBOY
Harcourt 2002
Winner of the S Mariella Gable Award, an 2001 L.A.Time Best Book , a Foreward Fiction award, and a Borders Original Voices selection.

Adapted for a feature film in 2006 directed by Kevin Bacon with Kyra Sedgewick, Marisa Tomei, Matt Dillon, Cambell Scott, Sandra Bullock and Oliver Platt.

"A spare and stunning debut. Perfect."--San Francisco Chronicle

Redel Is one of the most talented scary writers to come out of musty old New York in the last few decades. She's a writer with her fists clenched so tightly that her palms must bleed, and when she opens her fists, suddenly, in front of the reader, powerful, hurful truths come flying out." --L.A. Times

Remarkable. Full of suspense... and shimmering imagery." --The Village Voice.

A first novel that explores a mother's obsession, in prose at once lyrical and chillingly realistic, it catches the reader up in a tightening circle of the fleeting delights and accumulating dangers of her misguided intimacy."-- Elle

Where The Road Bottoms Out
Knopf 1995

"Only a poet could have written this prose. Only a storyteller could keep a reader turning these pages so greedily." --Grace Paley

Swoon
The University of Chicago Press 2003
Finalist for the James Laughlin Prize

"Poems that sing from the 'full catastrophe' of a woman's life:erotic life and mother love swooning in the same book, often in the same poem!...The world is richer because of it, and truer and less lonely." --Marie Howe

"Swoon is a startling sequence of poems-- the voice fired with erotic hunger, the language sharply original,oddly tilted, and ruthless in its assertions of the aweful and blessed truths. Victoria Redel speaks from the very spine of her experience. Open this book and she will pull you in." --Billy Collins

THE NEW YORK TIMES:BOOKS IN BRIEF: FICTION & POETRY

SWOON
By Victoria Redel.
University of Chicago, paper, $14.

''What wild animal went where?'' cries a voice in one of these poems, a question that intimates two things about the characters in ''Swoon'': (1) they're aroused, and (2) they're not wasting any time doing something about that arousal. Not only does no appetite go unsatisfied, but the satisfaction usually takes place at breakneck speed, often in a corner of ordinary life; throughout, men and women cuddle hurriedly, though Redel frequently substitutes an R-rated verb for ''cuddle.'' The result is a picture of daily life riddled with passion. Sensuality is a rarity to many chroniclers of the familiar, whereas here it's something you can have for the asking: ''I want more Goya,'' a speaker shouts, ''I want more July,'' and, bingo, both art and heat ensue. Redel's is a poetry of gasped fragments in which people don't merely go for the gusto but are transformed by it; ''it didn't matter who she'd ever even been before,'' a poem says of one of those inexhaustible beings. While some books can be read in a single sitting, this isn't one of them. Redel's characters don't walk the line between appetite and everything else so much as they dash back and forth across it, warming the pages so that readers who take up ''Swoon'' are likely to drop it from time to time and blow on their fingers as though they've grabbed a hot skillet. David Kirby

Already The World
Kent State University Press 1995
Winner of the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Award

"I like Victoria Redel's poems because of their braveness and their lucidity....There is no flight here to incoherence; the poems speak plainly and, in some cases, beautifully. The music lis lovely and the tone, distinctive....'Food' for example has to be one of the most passionate, chilling, tender, poems of the decadse."--Gerald Stern


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		fiction: THE BORDER OF TRUTH Counterpoint 2007 Barnes and Noble Discovery Selection "The Border of Truth" is such a good novel that it could also be any American's story" --LA Times “The family mystery builds to a climax, the revelations of love, guilt, betrayal, loss, and denial are haunting.” --Booklist "A rich, multilayered story" --Library Journal Redel moves us back and forth between the present day and 1940, and once again (as in her novel Loverboy) makes a psychologically complex book matter-of-fact and mesmerizing. –More Magazine LOVERBOY Harcourt 2002 Winner of the S Mariella Gable Award, an 2001 L.A.Time Best Book , a Foreward Fiction award, and a Borders Original Voices selection. Adapted for a feature film in 2006 directed by Kevin Bacon with Kyra Sedgewick, Marisa Tomei, Matt Dillon, Cambell Scott, Sandra Bullock and Oliver Platt. "A spare and stunning debut. Perfect."--San Francisco Chronicle Redel Is one of the most talented scary writers to come out of musty old New York in the last few decades. She's a writer with her fists clenched so tightly that her palms must bleed, and when she opens her fists, suddenly, in front of the reader, powerful, hurful truths come flying out." --L.A. Times Remarkable. Full of suspense... and shimmering imagery." --The Village Voice. A first novel that explores a mother's obsession, in prose at once lyrical and chillingly realistic, it catches the reader up in a tightening circle of the fleeting delights and accumulating dangers of her misguided intimacy."-- Elle Where The Road Bottoms Out Knopf 1995 "Only a poet could have written this prose. Only a storyteller could keep a reader turning these pages so greedily." --Grace Paley



		poetry: Swoon The University of Chicago Press 2003 Finalist for the James Laughlin Prize "Poems that sing from the 'full catastrophe' of a woman's life:erotic life and mother love swooning in the same book, often in the same poem!...The world is richer because of it, and truer and less lonely." --Marie Howe "Swoon is a startling sequence of poems-- the voice fired with erotic hunger, the language sharply original,oddly tilted, and ruthless in its assertions of the aweful and blessed truths. Victoria Redel speaks from the very spine of her experience. Open this book and she will pull you in." --Billy Collins THE NEW YORK TIMES:BOOKS IN BRIEF: FICTION & POETRY By DAVID KIRBY Published: March 7, 2004 SWOON By Victoria Redel. University of Chicago, paper, $14. ''What wild animal went where?'' cries a voice in one of these poems, a question that intimates two things about the characters in ''Swoon'': (1) they're aroused, and (2) they're not wasting any time doing something about that arousal. Not only does no appetite go unsatisfied, but the satisfaction usually takes place at breakneck speed, often in a corner of ordinary life; throughout, men and women cuddle hurriedly, though Redel frequently substitutes an R-rated verb for ''cuddle.'' The result is a picture of daily life riddled with passion. Sensuality is a rarity to many chroniclers of the familiar, whereas here it's something you can have for the asking: ''I want more Goya,'' a speaker shouts, ''I want more July,'' and, bingo, both art and heat ensue. Redel's is a poetry of gasped fragments in which people don't merely go for the gusto but are transformed by it; ''it didn't matter who she'd ever even been before,'' a poem says of one of those inexhaustible beings. While some books can be read in a single sitting, this isn't one of them. Redel's characters don't walk the line between appetite and everything else so much as they dash back and forth across it, warming the pages so that readers who take up ''Swoon'' are likely to drop it from time to time and blow on their fingers as though they've grabbed a hot skillet. David Kirby Already The World Kent State University Press 1995 Winner of the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Award "I like Victoria Redel's poems because of their braveness and their lucidity....There is no flight here to incoherence; the poems speak plainly and, in some cases, beautifully. The music lis lovely and the tone, distinctive....'Food' for example has to be one of the most passionate, chilling, tender, poems of the decadse."--Gerald Stern