Bravos for SHELLEY GILBERT and
Swimming Naked with Jellyfish

The coming-of-age story of a girl who hates semicolons, loves extremes, and lives her life exposed.

"Shelley Gilbert's prose is wonderfully vivid and straightforward...the writing is compelling...and though the story confronts rather grave issues, Iris’s witty, accessible tone makes an ideal balance that encourages readers to keep the pages turning."

"Shelley Gilbert is a wonderful writer. She's brave, intelligent and it’s clear that she takes great pleasure in the language. This is good work. Sometimes even dazzling."

"Shelley Gilbert has written an autobiographical novel. She has a fresh new voice, at times edgy, at times confiding...seductive, but always confident...as a reader you feel you are in good hands. The emotional range of Ms. Gilbert's novel is very broad — intense childhood anger, adolescent insecurity, passion, grief and rebellion, pride. It is not a serene book. The winds of feeling start howling in the first chapter and hardly subside. But the narrator's voice can control the passion, too — becomes stronger, in fact, as the temperature rises. It is a full-fledged, powerful novel, a deadly serious account of one woman's effort to discover and maintain her identity, her sense of self and self-worth, despite an upsetting childhood and an adolescence ending in tragedy."

"I enjoyed this book VERY MUCH. Very honest and the author just poured out her feelings. I laughed at times and felt sorry at other times. A sequel is NEEDED. The author has had some life, more than I ever would have thought. When I read the book, my eyes got moist at times and there were times my cock got hard. Thank you for all of those emotions."