Reviews of Black Glasses Like Clark Kent

"[A]complex, unresolved, beautiful story." —Los Angeles Times

"Astounding." —New York Post "Required Reading"

“Fueled by a writer’s respect for the truth, Svoboda fashions a family memoir that raises haunting new questions about moral responsibility in a time of war and the lingering effects of combat.” —Booklist

“Svoboda chronicles her uncle’s odyssey in occupied Japan and unearths some troubling truths about the U.S. military.” —Kirkus

"Svoboda's insightful, disturbing and moving dual memoir stands as a testimony not only to her bravery and persistence in following an obscured trail but also to all veterans who have harbored secrets until they were eaten up by them." —Shelf Awareness

“Delving into the past, in this wonderful, singularly wry memoir, turns up enough guilt to go around for everyone. And yet, such is the honesty, humor and literary skill of Terese Svoboda that she manages to turn this sad story into a triumph of compassion and insight.” —Phillip Lopate, editor of The Art of the Personal Essay

“When Terese Svoboda agrees to write the war story of her uncle, who served in the American military police in Japan in the aftermath of World War II, she enters a nightmarish world of secrets and irretrievable truths. Lucid, self-knowing and artful, her memoir about getting the story will resonate for readers of every generation.” —Alice Kaplan, author of The Interpreter

“Terese Svoboda is a true American original.” —Dan Chaon

“Few books over the past decade have surprised and moved me as much as Terese Svoboda’s Black Glasses Like Clark Kent. A family romance in the guise of a biography and memoir, this is also a mystery in the spirit of writers as various as Dashiell Hammett and Sigmund Freud, Patricia Highsmith and D. W. Winnicott.” —Robert Polito, judge of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize

“What the book for sure is: great and interesting and a good read and, in the best possible way, containing that vital element of some of the best nonfiction books, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent has a conscience.” —Weston Cutter, Corduroybooks.com