Anne Baldo’s One Day, Hard and Clear is a novel of narrative gestalt: people, characters who’re more than how they see one another. Whether we’re talking about Sami, a layered, complex young woman from Windsor, or True, her one-time boyfriend who strives to become more than it’s given him to be, Mrs. Baldo’s novel is a story which breathes in all the right places. It’s a book of exquisite, living, sincere detail which feels less like words in a book and more like a secret confided between childhood friends over a hot drink ... Mrs. Baldo is, in my opinion, a quiet virtuoso of Canadian literature.
Chris Fash, author of Heroine
In One Day, Hard and Clear, Anne Baldo offers a world in which hearts pound to Hole basslines and brilliant girls are dimmed by damaged boys. This book is a raw and heartfelt exploration of the secret, idiosyncratic rituals of female friendship and the lifelong grasp of first loves.
Susan Sanford Blades, author of Fake It So Real
In One Day, Hard and Clear, Anne Baldo offers a world in which hearts pound to Hole basslines and brilliant girls are dimmed by damaged boys. This book is a raw and heartfelt exploration of the secret, idiosyncratic rituals of female friendship and the lifelong grasp of first loves.
Susan Sanford Blades, author of Fake It So Real
One Day, Hard and Clear is a story which breathes in all the right places. It’s a book of exquisite, living, sincere detail which feels less like words in a book and more like a secret confided between childhood friends over a hot drink ... Anne Baldo is, in my opinion, a quiet virtuoso of Canadian literature.
Chris Fash, author of Heroine
Anne Baldo takes us back to an era that's not so much rose-tinted as spray-tanned — a time of car-crash TV and ruthless aggression. Baldo shows us love (or what passes for it) in spray paint aliens, shared lip gloss, MySpace pages, and flip-phone texts. This novel is for anyone who's ever loved a fixer-upper and admired the flaws in what's deeply flawed. We've all known a True. Few of us have ever been so blessed as to have a Sami in our lives.
Jamie Kitts, Managing Editor of Qwerty Magazine
Rife with pop culture references, sympathetic Britney references, LFO playing in the background, characters who are so unbearably realized, reaching for each other but unable to connect—the tension of that. The brilliance of these sentences. The details with which Baldo builds her fictional world, it is all of just so wonderful, and I am so excited for the rest of you to discover it all.
Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This
Rife with pop culture references, sympathetic Britney references, LFO playing in the background, characters who are so unbearably realized, reaching for each other but unable to connect — the tension of that. The brilliance of these sentences. The details with which Baldo builds her fictional world, it is all of just so wonderful, and I am so excited for the rest of you to discover it all.
Kerry Clare, author of Definitely Thriving
Anne Baldo takes us back to an era that's not so much rose-tinted as spray-tanned — a time of car-crash TV and ruthless aggression. Baldo shows us love (or what passes for it) in spray paint aliens, shared lip gloss, MySpace pages, and flip-phone texts. This novel is for anyone who's ever loved a fixer-upper and admired the flaws in what's deeply flawed. We've all known a True. Few of us have ever been so blessed as to have a Sami in our lives.
Jamie Kitts, Managing Editor of Qwerty Magazine
With friendship at the core of the novel, Baldo demonstrates she is adept at depicting that heartbreaking moment when someone realizes a once-cherished friendship is over. Her prose is compulsively readable, shimmering with detail, creating an irresistible flow that carries the reader along. The novel is also filled with wisdom and insight, frequently capturing, in seemingly effortless fashion, naked truths about human relationships that can be breathtaking in their simplicity...
The Seaboard Review
With friendship at the core of the novel, Baldo demonstrates she is adept at depicting that heartbreaking moment when someone realizes a once-cherished friendship is over. Her prose is compulsively readable, shimmering with detail, creating an irresistible flow that carries the reader along. The novel is also filled with wisdom and insight, frequently capturing, in seemingly effortless fashion, naked truths about human relationships that can be breathtaking in their simplicity...
The Seaboard Review