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Up to the blackout, The Sweetmeat Saga offers the pleasure of seeing a minor talent at the top of his form. Gravenson has an excellent ear for grotesque banality and a fine sense of timing. The unconventional narrative form allows him the freedom to hit and run without the need to bury each character and incident according to the rituals of traditional prose fiction. Indeed, pursuing the book's odd typographical construction, the eye takes in whole pages as if they were pictures, and the mind follows amiably as it develops a taste for the Sweetmeats. The reader gets the amusing sensation of watching and listening to a book rather than reading it.
* R.Z. Sheppard