Recent reviews by Cudgel

If you don't play this game you're dumb and no one likes you

One of the pure triumphs of recent fiction: an ebullient child narrator, held captive with his mother in an 11-by-11-foot room, through whom we encounter the blurry, often complicated space between closeness and autonomy. In a narrative at once delicate and vigorous — rich in psychological, sociological and political meaning — Valve reveals how joy and terror often dwell side by side.