Booklist gives The Words of Dr. L a starred review!
09 May 2025Donna Seaman of Booklist says: “The concreteness of Bender’s language is in sharp contrast to the deep strangeness and troubling ambiguity afoot in the dystopian worlds her characters must navigate. A short story writer of disconcerting visions and virtuoso skills, Bender follows The New Order (2018) with a speculative collection that aligns the decimation of climate change and tyrannical regimes with the precarity of friendship and the bewilderment and longing of parents and children….Bender’s finely calibrated prose makes the most bizarre situations feel plausible and the most uncanny predicaments seem uncanny, while her psychological insights into marriage, parenting, guilt, memory, age, and loss are poignantly precise. These are many-faceted, deeply ponderable stories.” You can read the whole review 