Summary and Reviews of A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison

Media Reviews

O: The Oprah Magazine (Editor's Pick) Delicious, lazy-day reading. Just don't underestimate the writing. Ellison describes her various love triangles in lavish prose... . The real strengths of this novel are the foggy, intimate flashbacks that so perfectly capture the sexual and romantic confusion of a young woman in a foreign land.

The Week In Jan Ellison's terrific debut novel, youthful sexual antics produce an 'astonishing' fallout decades later, said Joan Frank in the San Francisco Chronicle... . As we read on, the story 'morphs - flavorfully, artfully - into a sexual whodunit.'

Flavorwire Rich and detailed ... The plot explodes delightfully, with suspense and a few twists. Using second-person narration and hypnotic prose, Ellison's debut novel is both juicy and beautifully written. How do I know it's juicy? A stranger started reading it over my shoulder on the New York City subway, and told me he was sorry that I was turning the pages too quickly.

San Francisco Chronicle (Book Club pick) Astonishing . . . This voice is alive. It knows something. It will take us somewhere. The magic is accomplished so fast, so subtly, that most readers hardly notice . . . Lovely writing guides us through, driven by a quiet generosity... . This voice knows something, and by the end of the novel, so do we.

San Jose Mercury News An impressive fiction debut ... both a psychological mystery and a study of the divide between desire and duty.

The Huffington Post Part psychological thriller, part character study ... I peeled back the pages of this book as fast as I could.

The Rumpus Ellison renders the California landscape with stunning clarity... . She writes gracefully, with moments of startling insight... . Her first novel is an emotional thriller, skillfully plotted in taut, visual scenes. The stakes are high from the start... . As Ellison pulls the thread that unravels the past, she weaves a rich tapestry of memory and desire, secrets and omissions, and exposes the knotted wages of love.

USA Today Ellison is a tantalizing storyteller, dropping delicious hints of foreshadowing and shifting back and forth in time . . .If you are clinging to a stash of letters and ticket stubs from old lovers, Indiscretion may have you rethinking the cost of holding on to the past rather than basking in the virtues of the present.

Booklist [A] cleverly constructed debut ... a deftly crafted, absorbing novel that peels back the layers of Annie's character as it reveals the secrets of her past and present.

Kirkus Reviews Connoisseurs of domestic suspense will finish this book in a few breathless sittings, then wait eagerly for Ellison's next trick.

Library Journal Part romance novel, part coming-of-age story, and part family drama, this somber book about a perpetually flawed woman is a challenging and thought-provoking read.

Publishers Weekly The book is a page-turner but the crazy connections are too orchestrated to be believable, and the epistolary format doesn't fit.

 Emma Donoghue, New York Times bestselling author of Room An engrossing, believable, gracefully written family drama that reveals our past's bare-knuckle grip on our present.