In this elegy for a family, or for the family that could have been, Antunes masterfully evokes the obsessive pull of family life, the peculiar intensity of its joys and miseries. We had missed being happy by a thread, the narrator thinks at one point, what did we do wrong. Readers should not be put off by the narrative disorder and paucity of plot; Midnight Is Not in Everyones Reach is fiction of the highest order. The Washington Post
One of the living writers who will matter most Harold Bloom
Lobo Antunes, one of the most skillful psychological portraitists writing anywhere, renders the turpitude of an entire society through an impasto of intensely individual voices. The New Yorker
Hes been compared to Faulkner, Dos Passos, García Márquez, Céline, Cormac McCarthy, Malcolm Lowry, Proust, Woolf, Canetti, Gogol, Camus, Cortazar, and Nabokov. The real challenge for reviewers is coming up with a new Master of World Literature Antunes hasnt been compared to. Quarterly Conversation
"Antunes is definitely a writer worth reading for his literary talent and his insights into Portugal's history, geography, and national character." Publishers Weekly
"Lobo Antuness interweaving of thought, memory and dialogue, both inner and outer, creates as close an experience to the chaos of thinking as is possible on the page. His characters leak trauma while remaining outwardly composed and bland. The inner self is Lobo Antuness ultimate preoccupation, especially the exploration of neuroses and phobias." Times Literary Supplement
Among our countrys greatest authors. Brazil is summed up in his pages. Moacyr Scliar