" Sheffield's love of music is evident, but his tastes are incredibly bland and pedestrian. Most of his work has come during the most moribund period of both rock history (he ludicrously claims the 90s as the best decade in rock based on his love for Pavement, the band he more ludicrously claims made the Feelies dispensable) and for the most moribund magazine of the period: Rolling Stone. His tale of woe and the transformative power of love is thus a mixed bag, inspiring us with the music that helped him get through the turmoil, and causing us to cringe whenever he attempts to use drugs, baseball, or film as metaphor. In the end, his fey and precious tastes paint him as a twee, modern hipster who never really opened up to the world in the way he suggested--only to that one particular girl--and that is a precious and cliched tale. Worse, he plays the tragedy for all its worth by suggesting that the doctor told him that his wife was 'young and healthy' and had merely been unlucky to die of a pulmonary embolism. This might have been easy to swallow if he hadn't shown the couple--despite huge efforts to minimize it--as extremely unhealthy, both being chain smokers, borderline alcoholics, and junk food junkies (Renee had started to become obese) whose idea of exercise was to watch the dog take a crap in the back yard. Despite whatever genetic predisposition she may have had to have this episode, there is no doubt in the minds of any who know biology that environment played a huge role in her demise. She was not, as he suggests, 'young and healthy' and he consequently loses our sympathy for his tragic tale. "
— Ron, 2/17/2014