"Spark's prose is tight, funny, insightful and occasionally heartbreaking as it probes the current education system, the arts and society's ills."

- Publishers Weekly

“Spark is at her sly, funny, and cutting best in her third novel, a clever and affecting variation on the biblical story of Esther.”

- Booklist

". . . a smart, sprightly, sex-drenched, and neatly plotted novel . . ."

- Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio and the Chicago Tribune

" Debra Spark's haunting and profound third novel, Good for the Jews, recasts and retells the story of the Bible's Book of Esther, setting the powerful drama this time in a contemporary school system in Madison, Wisconsin.  There is a sense of timelessness, terror, and wonder about the events, the characters, and the modern instance of anti-Semitism at the center of their intertwined tales, but this is a novel of action as well as ideas.  Insightful, beautifully constructed, and genuinely suspenseful, Debra Spark has written an important story for our time.  There is humor and romance abounding, but there is also gravity in her art.  As familiar and recognizable as the place and characters may be, Sparks's graceful writing infuses the most mundane details with resonant significance, and does honor to her inspiration and to the novel form.

- Laura Kasischke, University of Michigan