Critical Praise

“This story tumbles through decadent days and nights, through ranks of soulful and magnetic characters. Taylor can wink like Dorothy Parker and move through worlds like Christopher Isherwood. After you read the last page, your shirt-cuffs will be stained with wine and perfumed with cigarette smoke, and you will be giddy and exhausted from this bittersweet, intimate, lovely party.”

——Jardine Libaire, author of Here Kitty Kitty

“Taylor is a superb satirist [and] manages to make worn New York yarns feel fresh again.”

——Publishers Weekly

“Katherine Taylor’s debut novel is sensational. It’s wry, funny, heartfelt, and written with grace. I thought boys had the patent on cruelty, but wow, girls can be rough on each other! And yet it’s a testament to Taylor’s talent that this novel never loses sight of the complexity, the humanity, at the heart of these characters.”

——Victor LaValle, author of The Ecstatic and Slapboxing with Jesus

“Reading Katherine Taylor is like meeting at a party full of strangers the person you instantly recognize will be a friend for life. Confiding, gossipy, and heartfelt, Rules for Saying Goodbye charts the inexplicable failings and the surprising durabilities of love. It is a sparkling and witty debut.”

——Elisabeth Robinson, author of The True and Amazing Adventures of the Hunt Sisters

“Achieves a directness and intimacy few novels can match. A beautifully observed and poignant book.”

——T.C. Boyle, author of DropCity

“For a fleeting and innocent period in a certain kind of girl’s life, cocktails and cigarettes are just an excuse to talk to each other. Rules for Saying Goodbye elegantly describes how this equation reverses --- the talking becomes the excuse for the cocktails and cigarettes. In her smart and funny novel, Katherine Taylor renders with unusual precision both the wistfulness and the wit in female friendships.”

——Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document