“The Lookback Window shines light in the darkest places—sometimes reflecting off the surface of a pool, other times off the blade of a knife, always gleaming. With elegant prose and propulsive energy, Hertz generates power by refusing to look away. The result is luminous.”

“Hertz has managed to tell a story of queer healing with all the narrative force of a thriller and the searing fury of an indictment. It’s an achievement of language, of style, in which the process of finding one’s way back to the world is considered at least in part as an act of learning to ‘speak the unspeakable.’ It’s a matter, Hertz seems to say, of finding the right words....At his best, Hertz sheds the trappings of traditional realism, adopting instead a swerving, almost psychedelic style that mirrors the abrupt and mercurial perceptions of a turbulent mind. He follows the worthy example of writers like Jean Rhys, Gary Indiana and Denis Johnson.”

“At turns poetic and chilling—and wholly, unapologetically queer—The Lookback Window...is brutally told. I had to look away, put the book down, take a deep breath often. But it proved impossible to ever stay away from.”

“The prose is remarkable, alternating from lush sensuality to unsparing brutality to quick cutting asides. This marks the arrival of a vital new talent.”