One reader's lyric is another reader's labor

Kirkus's review of Mary Monster isn't always positive, but it's fair. And anytime anyone compares me to Thomas Pynchon, I'll take it.

In this ambitious novel, Ingwalson’s (The Baby Monitor, 2017, etc.) prose slips in and out of Otis’ Mancunian dialect, flecked with rich allusions to rock, literature, and various Colorado locales. Otis’ voice is noirish in a way that will strike some readers as lyric and others as a bit labored... This is an elegant mystery in the mode of Thomas Pynchon or Jonathan Lethem, invested more in the journey than the outcome.

As an example of "labored" prose, the reviewer offers this, from my novel's third chapter:

For a few seconds I stared back, my eyes gone black as cats as I surveyed the silk of her neck. This one’s world had been night for far too long. She’d never seen a beach, she’d never cared for light. A streetlamp kicked on and it made her flesh milk-flesh.

Which is fine. If you don't like that, I'd urge you not to buy this book. Because the whole thing is like that. I swung for the fences on this one. I regret nothing.