Frances Brent, of the Sentinel – Tribune, calls The Goodbye House a winner.
“Like its predecessors the setting (of The Goodbye House) is California’s ever redefined Santa Clara Valley. Once orchards and vineyards thrived. The farmland is now the Silicon Valley of modern mythology with technology the failing or bumper crop. In 2003 its citizens are enduring the melancholy of 9/11 and the dot com collapse. It is an era of lowered expectations. The mood is nostalgic – not sentimental. The past is recognized, honored, unmourned. Coates’ achievement – a universal, at times comic, modern family tale weaving time and setting into action.”
Sentinel – Tribune, October 28, 2015
Lawrence Coates is the author of five books, most recently The Goodbye House. His work has been recognized with the Western States Book Award in Fiction, the Donald Barthelme Prize in Short Prose, the Miami University Press Novella Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction. He currently teaches in the MFA program at Bowling Green State University.