“In lit­er­a­ture, even dis­mal sites, accu­rately described and ele­gantly used, become excit­ing, are lifted into promi­nence, are shown to be sig­nif­i­cant. Maisel is the poet of the sub­di­vi­sion and the mall, ‘the day-by-day today, the clear­ance sales and pot­bel­lies and strollers, sun­less and never a protest, not a whim­per, and a King­wong egg roll for lunch, or spaghetti and meat­balls on Sty­ro­foam with meat sauce … ‘ He is an acute observer, a sen­su­al­ist, a cat­a­loger; his prose shows the rel­ish for detail that char­ac­ter­ized the work of Thomas Wolfe.” – Susan­nah Har­ris Stone, San Fran­cisco Chronicle

“I was excited by the voice that Maisel cre­ated, which very nearly cap­tures for me the spirit of the age and reflects a con­scious­ness of doom in the midst of our appar­ently invol­un­tary delights.” – Char­lotte Painter, Con­fes­sion from the Malaga Mad­house and See­ing Things

“Dis­may reflects the cadences and changes of a San Fran­cisco high school teacher’s life to the point that love and the often-unrealized mys­ter­ies behind per­sonal inter­ac­tions and rela­tion­ships are pre­sented to read­ers as sor­did facts of life. The protagonist/professor’s unusual and fright­en­ing affair with an 18-year-old high school beauty, his rela­tion­ship with lit­er­a­ture and his fel­low teach­ers, and his search for mean­ing in a tran­sient world will espe­cially inter­est literary-minded read­ers in search of some­thing more than the too-predictable romance.” – Diane C. Dono­van, Roanoke Time & World News

 

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