Books by Sylvia Brownrigg
 MORALITY TALE
"Brownrigg's mordant tale of modern marriage ... Refreshingly honest, winsomely self-deprecating, Brownrigg's glib yet contrite heroine evinces both a saucy innocence and tortured anguish."
—Booklist
"This novel is relentlessly thoughtful, a jittery and patient account of small acts and enormous repercussions. I read it in a day, but I’ll think about it for many, many days to come."
—Daniel Handler
Bold, dry, eccentric, "Morality Tale" cries out for a descriptive term that can pinpoint its oddness along with its likability. "Quirky" it will have to be, for this curious, teasing, idiosyncratic and strangely charming book.
It's a 21st century cautionary tale whose generic title evokes the morality play, an allegorical and didactic form common in the 15th century.
Unconventional in content, "Morality Tale" is also uniquely presented. Its 10 chapters, each illustrated with a charming line drawing, are labeled with actual or metaphorical scene-setting titles: "Footbridge," "Ferry Boat," "A Hard Place." (If you ever wondered what this looks like - as opposed to A Rock - Page 133 supplies the answer. Plaid Living-room Set, illustrated on Page 23, has the appearance of a vacated New Yorker cartoon.) And the chapters come with prefaces, too, savage little apercus....
This is Brownrigg's fourth novel, following "The Delivery Room," which was not only highly praised but also noted by some reviewers for its pin-sharp realism. "Morality Tale" is clearly different and seems to fit alongside an earlier work, "Pages for You," Brownrigg's second novel, which evoked the bipolar experience of first love. These two chamber pieces, with their brevity, virtuosity and egglike completeness, sit in a kind of equipoise: songs of innocence and experience. This author can do them both, and rather more besides.
From the front page review in the S. F. Chronicle (May 11, 2008) by New York writer Elsbeth Lindner. More...
 THE DELIVERY ROOM
"Sylvia Brownrigg has written one of the most outstanding and properly adult novels of recent years. . . For once, the word 'unforgettable' is justified."
—The Observer (UK)
"At the end, it is neither death nor birth but Brownrigg’s rich insights into the tiny, profound rebirths that occur in life and love that linger in the mind."
—Newsweek (International)
"The Delivery Room is a beautiful novel, rich and dense and satisfying. Brownrigg sees with amazing depth and tenderness into the hearts of her real-as-real characters — and into the reader's heart, too."
—Michael Chabon
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PAGES FOR YOU
Winner of a Lambda award for fiction
"This exquisitely written, bittersweet Valentine of a novel is for any reader who has ever been in a romantic relationship and wants to remember and revel in all the foolish things we do for love." —Publishers Weekly
"A pitch-perfect evocation of a young woman journeying through a year’s awakenings . . . this elegantly rendered, poignant novel is ultimately about awakenings both bright and rude, the intoxicating nature of desire, and the realization that love can devastate just as easily as it exalts." —The Village Voice
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THE METAPHYSICAL TOUCH
A New York Times Notable Book and on the LA Times Book Review’s list of fictions of the year
"A deeply impressive story of love, loss, philosophy, and the deep worries of childhood." —Penelope Fitzgerald
"Compulsively readable, profound, and utterly contemporary. . . a wonderful novel." —Claire Messud
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TEN WOMEN WHO SHOOK THE WORLD
"Sexy... No one interested in contemporary fiction would want us to be without Ten Women Who Shook the World."
—John Lanchester, New York Times Book Review
"Her stories can be read almost as parables, but they are so fully felt and imagined that they seem breathed into being, rather than written — a sure sign of the presence of a great writer, when you can't hear the writing, and the story just pours effortlessly into your thirsty ear." —LA Weekly
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