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“The literary rhythm captures the
steady momentum of American progress….poignant….beautiful and melancholy….with
a final image that made my eyes well up….funny and heartbreaking and, like
Rakoff himself, not easy to forget.”
— Entertainment Weekly
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"An extraordinarily and deliriously entertaining work....hearfelt, charmingly profound....[a] giddy, wistful triumph
— Paul Rudnick, The New York Times Book Review“Suffused with joyful invention. Readers may come to the book to pay their respects, but they will leave rejuvenated by the splendor of the warmth and wordplay. Composed a hand-span’s distance from death, it feels death-defying….irrepressibly funny, and even strangely uplifting, in jubilant verse….If this book must serve as his memorial, it’s at least as life-affirming as any that a writer has left behind
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Sly, bravura....a marvel of gamesmanship, Mr. Rakoff describes hardship, illness, death and depravity, knowing how ingeniously his book’s style and substance would fight each other....gift for balancing truth telling and humor....future readers can turn to this book to remember why he was so widely appreciated and is sorely missed
— Janet Maslin, The New York Times
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The literary rhythm captures the steady momentum of American progress….poignant….beautiful and melancholy….with a final image that made my eyes well up….funny and heartbreaking and, like Rakoff himself, not easy to forget
— Entertainment Weekly, A
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Ingenius, delicately haunting…..probing, poignant, and wickedly funny….illuminate[s] the many stages of life
— O Magazine
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It’s terrific: a sweeping narrative of the 20th century that encompasses personal tragedy, family secrets and broad social movements while going down as easy as a bite of crème brûleé
— Gregory Cowles, The New York Times Book Review
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Even at six vivid verbs, the title doesn’t do justice to the breadth of this short, acrid, elusive, entrancing book.
— Bloomberg"Inspired...accessible, delightful....powerful.... alluringly designed by Chip Kidd and illustrated by the cartoonist Seth, is filled with the sly, sharp social commentary that made Rakoff such a favorite....What shines through in this novel, even more than in his nonfiction, is a piercing, wistful appreciation for life, love and art....deserves to become a classic.....a rare bird: moving, amusing, lilting, crushing.
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I just marveled at his words….What he’s created in this book is Seussian
— Ira Glass, in an interview with O Magazine
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“Beautiful and heartbreaking....delightful.... hilarious and lewd and shot through with a longing for life
— New York Times
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A novel in rhyming couplets narrated in iambic tetrameter? Why not?... Along the way, you can have a lot of fun, no matter how serious the subject — family, sometimes alienating, sometimes consoling — because of the rhymes. Rakoff makes such pairings as virago and Chicago, ceases and paresis, skittish and Yiddish, antelope and envelope, horas and Torahs, Alzheimer's and climbers, for 100 cleverly rendered and entertaining pages.
— Alan Cheuse, NPR.org
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[A] tour de force novel-in-verse....It is hard not to feel celebratory over its heart-singing smarts, its existence as a fist raised against a life ending. What melancholia is there is confined to its characters — it’s a triumphant, moving work of true craft and wit.
— Austin American-Statesman"Truly singular....There is so much bound up in the novel's singsong verse: stories about AIDS and Alzheimer's, altruism, art, lives linked together by buried incidents that spring up again to bear unexpected fruit.
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[A] marvelously barbed novel in verse.
— Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair’s “Hot Type
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Mesmerizing....Combines his wit and his gravity....Astounding
— Publishers Weekly
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A fitting memorial to a humorist whose embrace of life encompassed its dark side....[the book] retains a spirit of sweetness and light, even as mortality and inhumanity provide a subtext.....Strong work. It deepens the impact that this was the last book completed by the author.
— Kirkus Reviews
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“Ingenius, delicately haunting…..probing,
poignant, and wickedly funny….illuminate[s] the many stages of life.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine
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“Suffused with joyful invention.
Readers may come to the book to pay their respects, but they will leave
rejuvenated by the splendor of the warmth and wordplay. Composed a hand span’s
distance from death, it feels death-defying….irrepressibly funny, and even
strangely uplifting, in jubilant verse….If this book must serve as his memorial,
it’s at least as life affirming as any that a writer has left behind.”
— Wall Street Journal
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“[A] marvelously barbed novel in
verse.”
— Vanity Fair
-
“It’s terrific: a sweeping
narrative of the twentieth century that encompasses personal tragedy, family
secrets, and broad social movements while going down as easy as a bite of crème
brûleé.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“Beautiful and heartbreaking....hilarious
and lewd and shot through with a longing for life.”
— New York Times
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“What shines through in this novel,
even more than in his nonfiction, is a piercing, wistful appreciation for life,
love, and art....deserves to become a classic.....A rare bird: moving, amusing,
lilting, crushing."
— NPR
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“Truly singular...There is so much
bound up in the novel’s singsong verse: stories about AIDS and Alzheimer's,
altruism, art, lives linked together by buried incidents that spring up again
to bear unexpected fruit."
— Atlantic
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“Reading the new novel in verse by
David Rakoff, you can hear his voice again, wordy, so witty, a little worried,
and always wise…..His mordant humor, his compassionate vision, his moral
questioning, his sharp honesty, they’re all intimately wedded to the meter and
the zestful diction of the book…The narrative is ambitious and has sweep…Agile,
vivid, and entertaining.”
— Boston Globe
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“Rakoff’s performance is a
treasure. He knows exactly where the stresses should be and is a deft and
artful actor as well as writer. That his voice is sometimes soft and his
delivery etiolated at points is explained by a brief, moving interview recorded
with him and included at the end. I can’t wait to listen to it again. Winner of
AudioFile Earphones Award and a 2014 Audies finalist.”
— AudioFile
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“Mesmerizing…Combines his wit and
his gravity.”
— Publishers Weekly
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“Rakoff…brings his thoughtful and
tender perspective on life to this wonderfully funny yet heartbreakingly sad
novel-in-verse. Throughout this rhyming novel, he crosses decades, telling the
great American story through memorable characters loosely linked by acts of
kindness or callousness…Each chapter serves up a slice of life’s victories,
discoveries, cruelties, and casualties…This novel begs to be read aloud in the
mode of Rakoff’s frequent and popular radio appearances on NPR’s This American Life…Fans of the
award-winning author will embrace with particular appreciation this final
lesson on how to accept life’s blessings and blows.”
— Booklist
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“A fitting memorial to a humorist
whose embrace of life encompassed its dark side…[The book] retains a spirit of
sweetness and light, even as mortality and inhumanity provide a subtext…Strong
work. It deepens the impact that this was the last book completed by the
author.”
— Kirkus Reviews