Rae Bryant in The Fix.

"With a wink and nod for Wexler’s anti-conglomerate marketing themes, Methods’ innovative fiction pushes physical boundaries, speaks to bread, belays jungle walls, listens to disembodied sages, and escapes anti-utopias."

Charles Tan on Bibliophile Stalker.

"Wexler's prose is fresh and quite different, engaging in very human concerns filtered through the lens of literary style and technique that's neither condescending nor blatant yet quite accessible."

"Maria" on Fantasybookspot: "The point, for me, was often lost inside the great literary points that were being made. It was often difficult to tell whether the story teller was in a dream state or a waking one"

Booklist

Looking for a quick getaway from his girlfriend and his grinding job in the city, public relations specialist Lewis rents a house on Long Island from an eccentric artist--and accidentally sets fire to the living room. Fleeing to the nearest local diner, he by chance encounters the ringmaster of a circus that he suddenly finds himself running away to join. When, as the company's new marketing guru, he hops aboard the caravan of the Circus of the Grand Design, however, he unhappily finds little that resembles the Ringling Brothers milieu he expected. While interviewing an assortment of odd and dysfunctional characters, from a promiscuous juggler to a triad of abusive trapeze artists, he falls for the enchanting and beautiful Cybele, who may or may not be real, and who forces him to confront his own darker nature. Although the narrative occasionally drags, newcomer Wexler excels at lucid prose and provocative ideas, giving the Bradbury-ish carnival-comes-to-town theme a new twist and showing promise as an original fantasist. Carl Hays Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Publisher's Weekly

A traveling circus with an otherworldly pedigree serves as a supportive surrogate family for a directionless young man in this diverting traipse through the terrain of magic realism. Lewis, an amiable slacker, is fleeing after accidentally burning down a Long Island beach rental when he bumps into Joseph Dillon, enigmatic ringmaster of the Circus of the Grand Design. Dillon hires him for public relations work, but warns that there’s no coming back from a circus that “moves in the fourth dimension.” The circus crew includes Garson Gold, a rakish juggler with a seemingly supernatural talent for keeping aloft any item tossed him, and Bodyssia, a capybara trainer with Amazonian appetites. While Lewis spends most of the novel ingratiating himself with these two, he’s also tantalized by Cybele, an alluring sylph whose sexual attentions ease his integration into the insular circus society. Wexler (In Springdale Town) mostly avoids the familiar “circus of life” terrain already mapped out by Angela Carter, Ray Bradbury and other fantasists, concentrating instead on Lewis’s efforts to understand the temporal and spatial peculiarities of the train carrying the circus between towns and to find his place in its quasi-mythic design. Though the narrative sometimes moves as aimlessly as Lewis, its unaffected style and exuberantly eccentric cast keep the story as buoyant and airy as a center-ring trapeze act. (Aug.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

“...reinforces the impression conveyed by his first book, In Springdale Town : we are witnessing the arrival of a new fantasist whose prose, in its clarity, warmth, and easily flowing progress, seems already fully matured.”

“...Wexler demonstrates a wonderful touch with his writing: to render Lewis’s lengthy inner journey through this dream-state without losing a sense of living, vital immediacy is an extraordinary accomplishment.” Mark Rich, New York Review of Science Fiction, January 2005

Niall Harrison in Strange Horizons

“a fascinating, deeply bizarre adventure.” Faren Miller, Locus Magazine, October 2004

Rick Kleffel in The Agony Column

Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City

In Springdale Town

“...no need for Lovecraftian monsters or rampaging serial killers to transform Springdale into a seriously creepy place. An old ballad suggests that one death haunts this village, but Wexler deviously, almost casually, creates a sense of wrongness that goes well beyond some past saga of jealousy and murder. Don’t read this one right before bedtime--or your next road trip.” review by Faren Miller, Locus Magazine, October 2003.

“The basic idea is familiar, almost banal, but Wexler’s treatment is witty, his writing is excellent, his characters are really well captured--I was very impressed with the story.” review by Rich Horton, Locus Magazine, November 2003.

“File under ambitious failure rather than qualified success.” reveiw by Peter Tennant, The Third Alternative, Issue 35, Summer 2003.

Locus Online review by Jeff VanderMeer.

Tangent Online review by Jay Lake.

Infinity Plus review by William P. Simmons

Agony Column Book Reviews and commentary by Rick Kleffel

Dusksite review by Lavie Tidhar.

The Alien Online review by Derek Fox

Steven Hunt's SF Crows Nest review by Sue Davies

Interview with me conducted by Rick Kleffel and excerpt from Circus of the Grand Design currently up on Fantastic Metropolis.

Article from the May 1, 2003 Yellow Springs News

Short Stories

“Travels Along an Unfurling Circular Path”

“...my personal favourite...a dream-like journey through a surreal landscape. The story moves from one sequence to another; at times viscerally sinister and claustrophobic, at others acquiring an almost farcical realism. It's one of those stories which fascinates by never quite revealing its mystery. I often find these kind of stories frustrating but this is so skilfully handled and well-controlled that it provides a fitting closure for the collection.” Reviewed by Nick Jackson in Infinity Plus.

“...the strongest piece [in the issue], a rather dreamlike tale of a journey through a cave, sort of...well, it's strange enough that the story best describes itself, but it's worth a look.” Reviewed by Rich Horton in the August 2006 issue of Locus Magazine.

“...a surreal, nightmarish quest by a man—or a man's soul, or some element of his psyche—on a route that always reverses itself to an ambiguous beginning.” Reviewed by Nick Gevers in the September 2006 issue of Locus Magazine.

"Wexler takes us on a very strange journey." Sam Tomaino for SFRevu.

"...Another of my favourite kinds of stories. A story of a lead character who journeys through various states of emotion, only to come back to his original emotion, mirrored by his location. Neat piece which resonates deeper interrigation." Richard Hawkins for scifi.uk.com.

"...a delicate, complex piece." Miranda Siemienowicz at HorrorScope. Go here for entire review.

“With this sort of title, I always expect a story like a maze in which I will wander, lost and confused, and here this expectation is met in full measure. A nameless man walks along a path which seems to have no end. Some of the objects he encounters may have symbolic import. He may be dead; this may be his hell, a hell of his own choosing. He may have committed a crime—the author hints at this, but his hints are enigmatic. The man thinks, at one point, "that everything he had encountered, path, boy, oranges, these beings, existed only for him, unfurling as he drew near, dissipating on his departure." So it seems, but readers might wish that some of this significance extended to themselves, as well. Reviewed by Lois Tilton in the August 2006 Internet Review of Science Fiction.

“Valley of the Falling Clouds”

“a potent exercise in pastoral surrealism” Reviewed by Nick Gevers in the February 2004 issue of Locus Magazine.

“Indifference”

“...yet another attack of the New Wave. The magical mechanisms of the universe are unexplained even as they affect, and dominate, Brown's life. Some of the magic is in the small tragedies of a failed marriage and a difficult work life, some of it in the disembodied head that takes up residence in Brown's apartment, mute editorialist to the protagonist's slow-motion struggles. Wexler interleaves odd historical and narrative vignettes, counterpointing and limning the stages of Brown's dissolution into indifference and eventual restoration to engagement.” Reviewed by Jay Lake for Tangent Online

“Suspension”

“...an awkward giant of a man with four unwieldy arms slips on ice and becomes trapped in the snow. Unable to rise alone, unaided by passers-by, and slowly freezing, he relives the memories of his life as a freak and outcast, despairing at the absence of love. "Suspension" develops slowly but has the quality of a whole life observed. Perhaps this is why, compared to the other four more incidental stories, Wexler's ending is the most hopeful, affirming that even strangers can connect with and care for one another. ” Reviewed by Charles Coleman Finlay for Tangent Online

“Tales of the Golden Legend”

“...a creation myth, poetically penned, with the astonishing conceit of sentient loaves of bread. There are humorous notes to this spiritually yeasty tale, which takes up another "insanity" premise (hearing loaves speak) and distills it into a meditation of beauty and proletarian honor. Loaves are fulfilled by being eaten and only those which are kneaded and baked with care attain a magical voice, audible to few persons. This is a gem of a story and a must-read” Reviewed by Daniel E. Blackston for SFReader.com

“...just plain silly. Different, granted, but still silly. I mean, who can take the idea of talking bread seriously - not that I think you're meant to really. It was an effort to keep my face straight as the singing bread warbled: ‘Yeast is in the air...’ ” Reviewed by Paul Kane for Terror Tales

“The magazine changes pace well with Robert Wexler's quirky "Tales of the Golden Legend" about the subtle languages that different kinds of bread speak (!!), understood by only a few gifted humans. Dosed with humor, including a first-person narrative by a loaf of bread, this is one of those stories you don't read every day, which is really what we're all looking for, isn't it?” Reviewed by Erol Engin, Tangent Online

“Besides its very cool illustrations and graphical layout, one way to figure out whether you're likely to enjoy the kind of stuff that appears in The Third Alternative...is whether you can swallow the premise of Robert Wexler's "Tales of the Golden Legend" that loaves of bread can talk and certain people can hear them:

On the way home from work, I stopped to buy a loaf at a bakery near the office. I tried not to be overwhelmed by the bread sounds around me. The fat loaves of country white complained about the skinny onion baguettes, while a basket of whole wheat rolls laughed at its own jokes. I selected a loaf of something called struan. The label on the shelf said it was made from wheat, corn, oats, brown rice, bran, buttermilk, and honey. It laughed and talked at the same time, a lusty, world-loving voice full of confidence and mirth. I saw it entertaining the other loaves, whistling like the sound of a baroque flute. On the way home I bought a newspaper and some fresh mozzarella.

“You don't need cheese with me,” the bread said from within the bag. I ignored it. We can't always do what the bread says.

Now, if you're scratching your head wondering if the aliens are kneading the dough or if there is some sort of molecular device in the yeast that has developed a crude borg-like intelligence, maybe you'd better go pick up a copy of Analog, instead. On the other hand, if you find this an intriguingly strange idea, you're in for a hearty repast. Because this story is sandwiched among some equally tasty morsels of outright bizarreness, served up with gusto.” Reviewed by David Soyka for SF Site