"Elegantly written, thoughtful, and challenging, The Laughing One sheds new light on Carr’s career. More importantly, though, Crean takes the reader on a journey through a nation’s relationship not only with Carr and her work, but with the First Nations and the land itself."

Emily Carr is a highly readable if quirky book that defies easy categorization

"Susan Crean’s book on Carr is several things at once, none of them drab: a fictionalized biography, a history textbook, a travelogue, a feminist tract, an ecological treatise, a plea for Aboriginal rights, and a reporter’s notebook."