"Tanner deals with the central question of all narrative texts: how the reader is manipulated into empathy or distance by the text. . . . This study . . . is the sort that needs to be redone in every classroom and by every mature reader. . . . Tanner offers provocative and useful discussions of rape and torture . . . " --Choice
"This thoughtful and disturbing book raises serious questions about 'the consequences . . . of reading representations...