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The Limits is a transcendently powerful novel, one that will haunt you with its urgent questions. What happens when we reach our own limits: of our capacity to love, or to meet the needs of those who rely on us, or to brook the extraordinary uncertainties of our world? You’ll stay up long past bedtime reading and rereading these exquisitely wrought pages. Freudenberger is a master of the novelist’s art, and this is her best work yet.
— Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge
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The Limits brilliantly renders the era of the pandemic, capturing how two families, in all their imperfections, try so valiantly to hold on to their loved ones in a difficult time. When you combine Freudenberger's meticulous research with her ability to portray our most complicated selves, the result is a novel that enlightens us in all the ways that truly matter. You will be transformed by this story.
— Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Take My Hand
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Nell Freudenberger proves yet again a masterful novelist, deftly painting her characters' interwoven lives against the backdrop of our tumultuous times. Rich, nuanced and compelling, The Limits is a deeply satisfying novel.
— Claire Messud, author of The Burning Girl
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A big-hearted, tightly-plotted novel that bravely takes on our times—from Covid-19 to climate change—by looking at the timeless stuff of human intimacy. Nell Freudenberger writes beautifully about the bonds between people: parents and children, lovers and exes, even strangers. The Limits is an immersive and powerful book.
— Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind
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Freudenberger’s exceptional skills as a novelist, her seamless prose and formidable intelligence, are on full display in The Limits. A novel about privilege and precarity, isolation and trauma, it is also a story of tenderness, love, and ultimately, hope.
— Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies
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The Limits is a transcendently powerful novel, one that will haunt you with its urgent questions. What happens when we reach our own limits: of our capacity to love, or to meet the needs of those who rely on us, or to brook the extraordinary uncertainties of our world? You’ll stay up long past bedtime reading and rereading these exquisitely wrought pages. Freudenberger is a master of the novelist’s art, and this is her best work yet.
— Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge
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As in Freudenberger's previous work, scientific points are well integrated and explained, and the intelligent, precise narration is a pleasure, with graceful depiction of the characters' inner lives.
— Kirkus Reviews
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A layered story of race and privilege set against the backdrop of Covid-19 lockdowns . . . Freudenberger’s longtime fans will find all the probing social insights and well-drawn characters they’ve come to expect from this accomplished author.
— Publishers Weekly
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Freudenberger is fluent in every realm, social conundrum, and crime against the earth she brings into focus, keenly attuned to science and emotion, tradition and high-tech, race and gender, greed and conscience, irony and tragedy. Each characters’ challenges are significant on scales intimate and global and their wrestling with secrets, anger, and fear grows increasingly suspenseful in this lambent, deeply sympathetic, and thought-provoking novel.
— Booklist (starred review) “Sensitive, luminous, and sometimes wryly funny, The Limits is a nuanced portrait of the difficult, worthwhile work of connecting with others-–even during a global disaster.
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Freudenberger brings the anxieties and challenges of the early pandemic days to vivid, engaging life . . . In The Limits, Freudenberger deftly employs thequestions posed by climate change, seafloormining and the struggle of modern medicinein the face of the unknown to shape the story.
— BookPage (starred review)
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“Sensitive, luminous, and sometimes wryly funny, The Limits is a nuanced portrait of the difficult, worthwhile work of connecting with others-–even during a global disaster.
— Shelf Awareness