“A wonderful, loving, tenderly teasing and often moving portrait. . . .Riley achieves a balance of warmth and subtle hilarity in recounting Ruth’s many slips from the ‘tightrope of obedience’ . . . [a] standout.”—Wall Street Journal

“There are inklings of greatness in Kate Riley’s first novel, Ruth. It claims a place on that high modern shelf next to the offbeat books of Ottessa Moshfegh, Sheila Heti, Elif Batuman and Nell Zink—those possessors of wrinkled comic sensibilities rooted in pain…Ruth is in touch with the oldest and darkest things in our makeup, yet revels in a very modern sense of what Riley calls ‘brainy female despair.’ Under Riley’s author photograph, on the back flap, a sentence reads: ‘This is her last book.’ I hope that’s not so.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“What really interests Riley is how a bright child’s mind resists the nonsensical demands of theology and how a young woman’s wit chafes in a closed community. … The author’s wry voice never flattens the meringue tips of Ruth’s childlike wonder. And later, as Ruth feels increasingly cramped in the little church, Riley maintains ironic distance, careful to avoid collapsing into the character inspired by her own experience. Her epigraphic style, informed by decades of sermons, aphorisms and comic retorts, ensures the novel’s delightful buoyancy. … Ruth’s … thwarted ambitions, her sacrifices for family and church, compose a melody as familiar as a melancholy old hymn. Riley’s ability to plumb that slip of salvation—in a way that stays true to Ruth’s life—is just one of this novel’s many graces.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post