Reviews of A Four-Sided Bed

“In clipped, poetic language, Searle skillfully unwinds a psychosexual narrative.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Elizabeth Searle stretches the angles of friendship, the lines of love and the curves of lust. . . . Her elegant prose and anything-but-PC gender play are pleasing to the mind and to the loins.” —Boston Phoenix

“Bending gender and conventional notions about love and marriage, Searle's bold, beautiful book reaches right past the sensationalism of a love triangle to offer us an intense and moving portrait of the different ways people can connect.” —Booklist, starred review

“Deception, lies, fears, pregnancy and AIDS complicate this unusually intelligent exploration of sexuality….[An] intense, deeply moving first novel.” —Publishers Weekly

“A powerful, unsettling first novel….A bright, distinctive, haunting debut.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“A Four-Sided Bed is a riveting study in human passions, desires and needs. Eerily evocative, we are pulled into the lives of four very different individuals and the ties that connect them. During the course of the novel it is as if we wake from a dream, shaking off the easiest explanations of sex, marriage and procreation to discover something much more primitive and solid. Elizabeth Searle is a writer of great skill and vision, more than fulfilling the promises of her wonderfully accomplished stories.” —Jill McCorkle

“A Four-Sided Bed is an erotically charged dance with multiple partners. Her characters reinvent their lives so successfully that they are haunted by the ghosts of their former selves, and the reader is haunted by the desperate beauty of their desire. Elizabeth Searle writes with intelligence, passion, and wit. She’s one of the best young writers around.” —Robert Boswell

“Elizabeth Searle writes like a poet, evoking her people with haunting intimacy and graceful lyricism. She lives not only with them, but inside of them, as if she is the soul in each of their bodies, as if she herself is that secret place where the most dangerous desires erupt.” —Melanie Rae Thon