“The fiction of writers like Graham Greene and Robert Stone... combine cracker-jack suspense with political comment. In her fast paced and handsomely written second novel, Teeth of the Dog, Ciment adds a 1990s-style ingredient: a woman’s progress toward self-reliance. The result is thought provoking and very entertaining. Teeth of the Dog delivers on several levels.” ~ The New York Times Book Review

“Ciment’s multilayered novel is a taut, intelligent literary thriller in which character and fate, and a yawning chasm of cultural differences, unite to cause tragedy... This ultimately sad and knowing tour of human frailty will serve to secure Ciment’s reputation for intelligent themes and uncompromising prose.” ~ Publishers Weekly

“(Ciment’ s) new thriller’s doomed love triangle of old husband, young wife and lusting other man reminded me of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, its shifting narrative viewpoints of Robert Stone’s dark novels, and its Americans-in-a-strange-land of Deborah Eisenberg’s chilling stories. Comparisons can be troubling, but as will all these writers, Ciment is smart, funny, vicious, loving and above all, unafraid to tackle big problems.” ~ Seattle Times

“Ciment has crafted a tensely powerful story, lit by flashes of irony and wry humor. Like V.S. Naipaul md his ex-friend Paul Theroux, she has an impressive ability to evoke the peculiar qualities and atmosphere of a specific locale. Add to this her clear-eyed yet sympathetic portraits of characters, and the result is a novel rich in observation and insight.” ~ Los Angeles Times

“Stunning … Ciment takes on nothing less than paradise. What (she) has achieved so brilliantly in this beautifully written novel is the multi-layered nature of such a predicament in such a place. In the end, the story speaks not only to the global effluent that has poisoned paradise, but to the sadness and cruelty of life itself.” ~ Bookforum

“An exotic island. A beautiful young woman. A lonely and mysterious drifter. If Humphrey Bogart movies make you cry, you’ll be doubling up on the tissues for this thriller about a doomed affair. It’s the best kind of sniffler: It makes you think as it makes you weep.” ~ Glamour

“Jill Ciment’s Teeth of the Dog so brutally evokes the tin-roofed humidity and broken-down infrastructure of a third-rate tropical holiday, you practically sweat onto the pages. An updated Conrad tale, full of moral ambiguity and horror.” ~ Vince Passaro, Elle