Reviews of The Complete History of New Mexico

“Like all good foundational narratives…both sentimental and subversive.” —The Believer

“McIlvoy has a gift for linking the strange, subversive and slimy with the weird, wonderful and wise.” —Albuquerque Tribune

“By turns surreal and all too real, it combines versions of history and fiction in a way that is pure innovation.” —New Mexico Magazine

“This collection provides us with glimpses of people so much like ourselves that it hurts…McIlvoy has crafted a novella that is unlike any other I’ve read.” —American Book Review

“The reader is drawn along on the rapidly flowing prose. This collection is well worth the read, both for McIlvoy’s style and his way of piercing together a global narrative from individual interconnecting narratives.” —Virginia Quarterly Review

“A powerful collection of stories that brilliantly reveal the raw power of the human experience.” —Altar Magazine

“The Complete History of New Mexico is the book equivalent of a Chile pepper: exotic, unpleasant and transcendent all at once.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A mesmerizing collection.” —Publishers Weekly

“The McIlvoyian insight and charm return, full force.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Kevin McIlvoy, with his novella, The Complete History of New Mexico, has earned his place next to these books [Huckleberry Finn and Edisto], and the collection as a whole can be ranked with the finer collections of Hemingway, O’Connor, Sherwood Anderson, and Donald Barthelme. If this is what small press publishing has come to, then American literature is in good hands.” —Pleiades