
– Wendy J. Fox, Buzzfeed
- Publishers Weekly
“The novel is a very astute critique of wealth disparity…The interior lives of DiFrancesco’s characters are rich and move with momentum. The plot is laced with sly commentaries on gender, income inequality, and gentrification (the way disaster and struggle can be spun by craven opportunists into something that later hangs in a museum, removed from the context which gave it meaning). DiFrancesco illuminates this landscape with nimble prose and complex characters, which feel shockingly familiar.”
~Lambda Literary review of All City
“All City is an important book, and very possibly a prophetic one. All City speaks for the people whose stories do not often get told, much less told with nuance and compassion.”
-Jessica Mannion in PANK
–All City in Ms. Magazine‘s “Reads for the Rest of Us”
“In this warm and lovely novel set in a near-future New York battered by climate change and gentrification, DiFrancesco (Psychopomps) braids together art, power, crisis, and community organizing…this loving, grieving warning thoughtfully traces the resilience, fragility, and joy of precarious communities in an immediate, compassionate voice.”
– Review of All City at Publisher’s Weekly
“Alex DiFrancesco’s novel All City is a gem of speculative fiction, a book that deftly explores the near future while examining current issues like gender, climate change, and income inequality.”
“A unique and original dystopian novel by a master of the genre, Alex DiFrancesco’s All City is a simply riveting read from cover to cover…certain to be an enduringly popular addition to both community and academic library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections.”
-Mid West Book Review
“This book asks us to consider some hard shit, and why shouldn’t we? Still, I read it in two hours and held it to my heart when I finished.”
– Carley Moore on Psychopomps at Electric Literature
“Alex DiFrancesco is a storyteller who captures hearts as well as minds, providing the light and voice to many readers who still find themselves in situations where their voices aren’t heard. Psychopomps is tender, raw, and at times challenging to read, but there is room for humor, too. DiFrancesco proves to be a truly singular voice in the world of nonfiction.
– Review of Psychopomps at Independent Book Review
“Alex DiFrancesco packs a ton of insight into this slim essay collection, writing frankly about their years spent figuring out their identity, navigating complicated relationships, surviving mental illness, and contending with the often overwhelming desire to abandon everything and just disappear. Most compelling, though, is DiFrancesco’s work toward finding evidence of connections between them and others in the trans community — both presently and in the past.”
— Arianna Rebolini on Psychopomps at BuzzFeed Books
“…one of the most heartbreaking collections I’ve read…”
–Andrew Byrds, on Psychopomps in Entropy
“Alex Difrancesco’s Psychopomps is an incisive and important essay collection.”
“DiFrancesco feels deeply, but passes their emotions off as casual. The book is about loves and losses, connections and longing, social justice, and heartbreak.”
—The Lower East Side Librarian on Psychopomps
” The world and characters are perhaps a bit realer than is comfortable, and gets even realer when it gets further into the metaphorical than the actual world would normally allow. Regardless, it has a serious pull, an undertow, that rips the reader right along. The Devils That Have Come to Stay is a fascinating book with some riveting writing.”
“Difrancesco’s acid Western is an intriguing combination of Jack London and Stephen King.”
“[Alex] DiFrancesco harkened back to the acid Westerns of the ’60s and ’70s with a dose of magical realism thrown in for [their] novel, The Devils That Have Come to Stay, a strange tale of gold fever and greed.”
–The Old West, Circa 2015, NoveList
“In [their] starkly beautiful, poetic novel The Devils That Have Come to Stay, [Alex] DiFrancesco takes us into a dark and violent world that only gets darker with each turn of the page.”
“A newer talent which does reveal the scaffolding of the writing process is that of [Alex] DiFrancesco in “The Chuck Berry Tape Massacre.” The account of mother love swamped by mental illness, child neglect, singing, and rock ‘n’ roll unfolds through discrete scenes that the reader pieces together only gradually. Despite surreal juxtapositions, jerky movement, and painful scenes, DiFrancesco finally bestows on [their] characters redemption and even immortality. [They] communicate the tragedy of human suffering.”