Vox - ISBNLookup.com

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Baker's self-indulgent novel, a 14-week PW bestseller in cloth, transcribes a long telephone conversation between two people who meet over a phone-sex call-in line. Author tour. (Feb.)

Library Journal

Jim and Abby meet over the phone when they both dial one of those 976 party lines that are advertised in adult magazines. After some exploratory small talk, they retire to the electronic ``back room'' for a more intimate chat. Their long conversation makes up the entire book. If the premise sounds a bit thin, remember that Nicholson Baker's brilliant first novel The Mezzanine ( LJ 11/1/88) was about an office worker's lunch-hour expedition to buy new shoelaces. Like all great artists, Baker has the ability to make familiar objects and everyday events seem new and strange. Centerfolds, lingerie catalogs, and X-rated videos will never look the same. Indeed, Vox transforms the genre itself: this is eroticism for the safe-sex Nineties. Not only is there no physical contact, the participants never leave the privacy of their own homes. Recommended, with the caveat that some readers may find the subject matter offensive. Baker's Room Temperature ( LJ 3/15/90) was one of LJ 's ``Best Books of 1990'' ( LJ 1/91).--Ed.-- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles

Louise Bernikow

This is Ravel's "Bolero" played out on the page…The conversation gets sexier and sexier and…well, I'm too rang out to go on.
—Cosmopolitan

Alexander Theroux

A remarkable tour de force...Vox is hilarious...a delightful novel.
—The Washington Post Book World

Michael Upchurch

Imagine Chagall being commissioned to do the drawings for the joy of sex, and you'll have some notion of the topsy-turvey, concupiscent free-for-all that Vox conjures up....The book exudes a giddy buoyancy that you don't often find in American fiction.
—The San Francisco Chronicle

Cyra McFadden

Explicit, often funny, and above all erotic...Baker specializes in the risky and playful.
—The Los Angeles Times