"This is a ghost story, a quest narrative, a psychological thriller, a mother-daughter fairy tale, and, since a wedding plays a role, it must also be a comedy. A spiritual ritual is underway, ageless and sublime, yet very contemporarily adorned. The appeal and accomplishment of this story is vastly satisfying"
—Antonya Nelson, author of Funny Once

"Theodora Ziolkowski comes from a line of writers including the late-greats Eudora Welty (in her sometimes under-appreciated comic mode), Flannery O'Connor, Charles Portis, and Lewis Nordan, and more recently the great George Singleton. She's darkly funny with a fine eye for the everyday bizarre absurdities that make you want to lie about some of the people you come from."
—Brad Watson, author of Miss Jane

"Theodora Ziolkowski’s On the Rocks is wickedly sharp and acidly funny—a tragi-comic voyage into the land of mothers and daughters, grief and therapy, and the shipwreck of heartbreak. This is mordant, memorable work from a writer to watch."
—Alix Ohlin, author of Dual Citizens

"Theodora Ziolkowski's On the Rocks is a very funny, very wise novel about family—which is to say, about grief and love and betrayal and hope. And it's narrated by force of narrative nature—Eva, a young woman who is a brilliant sayer, and seer, but who also has a secret. And what a treat it is to watch Ziolkowski tease the secret out of her and into this wonder of a book."
—Brock Clarke, author of Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?

"Heart shattering and hilarious, often at the same time, On the Rocks is a bravura performance in miniature—a beautifully written, effervescently compassionate window into the inextricably bound histories, heads, and hearts of Eva and Leonora Marino.”
—Kate Racculia, author of Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts and Bellweather Rhapsody

"In her post-postmodern comedy of manners, On the Rocks, Theodora Ziolkowski goes all-in in reimagining Austenesque billet –doux and pas de deux now steeped in the new electromagnetic stew of the contemporary nuclear family’s terrarium. I marveled at the book's 5G velocities, the sublime catalogue of objective correlatives collecting meanings on the sly, the down low. At once, On the Rocks seems timeless and time-full, ageless in its emotion and instant indetail. This is an amazing amalgam, all double-timed and quick silvered in the presence of mecureal mercury."
—Michael Martone, author of Brooding and The Moon Over Wapakoneta