"Ms. Moore isn’t concerned with crime and punishment so much as with the small acts of courage that get children (and adults) out of trouble: telling the truth; believing another’s truth; not being snowed by a sensational tale. The author rises above sensation herself by being nervy and ruthless, never picking the easy way when she could be planting thorns, puzzles and harsh wisdom in the reader’s path.”

–Regina Marler, The New York Observer   (read the full review)

“This novel is as horrible as it is great, and vice versa.”

–Carolyn See, The Washington Post   (read the full review)

“The author of In the Cut returns to form with this compelling jailhouse drama. The narrative alternates between four points of view, all equally commanding . . . Moore brings electrifying prose and a richly compassionate viewpoint to her meditation on both the dark and the generous impulses at work in all of us.”
–Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

“In spare yet hypnotic prose, Moore examines the bond between a young psychiatrist and a mentally ill patient in her devastating sixth novel, set at an upstate New York federal women’s prison . . . The place epitomizes what’s wrong with our nation’s prison system and stands as a warning about our growing mental health crisis. Moore deftly shifts perspective among her principal characters as the action hurtles to an oddly satisfying resolution. Reading this heartbreaker is like watching a train wreck while dialing for help on your cellphone. You can’t turn away.”
–Publishers Weekly

“In the Cut put Moore on the map as the most unflinching, graphically sexual, violent, literary female fiction writer alive . . . [She] has a beautiful way of not gripping her characters too tightly, despite the fact that her novels are carefully constructed. In The Big Girls, this quality manifests itself in the way she weaves the voices without clunky authorial intervention . . . This is a novel about why people do things, the fears and motivations and desires that crowd, pervert and reroute the best-laid plotlines of our lives . . . Susanna Moore writes the way Frida Kahlo painted.”
–Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review