“Quick, lucid storytelling, and curt and cruel, yet rich language transforms what is a rather simple premise—a sheltered adolescent in the 1950s outgrowing his parents' cocoon and trying to find himself in the army—into a searing 286-page quest for sex, love and purpose.”
– Adirondack Review
“Sardonic and absurdist in the mode of Albee and Shepard, a nuclear-age, X-rated Twain, and one of our best underappreciated writers, DeMarinis takes lunacy to new dimensions as he toys with archetypal tales of incest and warriors betrayed in this droll, furious, heartbreaking cold war saga of war's long shadow and love's torments.”
– Donna Seaman, Booklist
“I have always believed that Rick DeMarinis is one of the most talented and versatile writers of my generation, and in my opinion Mama's Boy is his best work yet. He finds humanity in the bizarre and barbaric, and page by page he shows how redemption can find us when we cannot find it ourselves. This is one of the best novels I've read in years.”
– James Lee Burke, author of Cimarron Rose and Black Cherry Blues
“DeMarinis is a contemporary avatar of that tradition in American short story writing that by way of Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, O'Connor, Welt, and Cheever, is essentially religious and, because rooted in the everyday, comic … his art, then, is comedy of a very high order.”
– Russell Banks
