Review by Booklist Review
Diski, who died of lung cancer in 2016, was a singular voice in modern letters, flinty, unsentimental, and ruthlessly honest but with a mordant sense of humor. She wrote about whatever she wanted to write about--happiness, sexual abuse, and, ultimately, her own mortality--and in various forms, including novels, memoirs, short stories, and travel narratives. She was also the kind of writer who made everything she wrote about compelling, even the most mundane of topics and people. Who else would find a connection between Denis Thatcher, the apparently unexceptional husband of Margaret Thatcher, and Moby-Dick? In this compendium of more than 30 essays, which first appeared in the London Review of Books from 1992 to 2014, she writes about everything from Antarctica to depression to Jeffrey Dahmer to Stanley Milgram's famous study of obedience as well as various aspects of being Jewish and the "irrational" human activity that we call sleep. Unlike most people, Diski refused to look away from unsavory or unpleasant topics. But, then again, Diski was like no other writer. She was fearless, as is evident in this peerless collection. With an afterword by her daughter, Chloe Diski, this is a must for Diski admirers and all essay lovers.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This effortlessly readable posthumous essay collection from Diski (1947--2016) (In Gratitude) shows her at her best. In "A Feeling for Ice," she writes about her troubled childhood and her longing to visit Antarctica: "I wanted white and ice as far as the eye could see." "It Wasn't Him, It Was Her" explores the reputation of Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth, known primarily for having "corrupted Nietzsche's work." "He Could Afford It" investigates Howard Hughes's obsessive compulsions: "What made Hughes remarkable," she writes, is that "there was no practical reason for him to try to control his madness." In "I Haven't Been Nearly Mad Enough," she compares writer Barbara Taylor's memories of mental institutionalization with her own: in the midst of fear, both found a sense of community. Diski's works are varied and surprising, and she puts a fresh spin on the personal essay with her bracing, singular prose, never veering into self-indulgence: "One of the basic beliefs we all have... is that we are who we are because we know that by definition there can be only one of us. I'm Jenny Diski. You therefore aren't." To miss these essays would be a shame. Agent: Peter Straus, RCW Literary. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A collection of essays by a master of the form. Between 1993 and her death in 2016, Diski wrote several hundred essays for the London Review of Books--some book reviews, some personal pieces, "reflections on the world and its stories for the most part," according to Wilmers, longtime editor of the LRB, who selected the essays for this masterful new collection of her work. In nearly all of the pieces, Diski's voice is sharp, wry, and entirely her own. Writing about Sonia Orwell, she notes, "there must be people who, during their lifetime, get their minds right enough not to feel bitterness as the end looms and they realise that nothing much else is going to happen to them apart from death." She goes on: "But not many, surely?" Diski's interests ranged from Jeffrey Dahmer to Princess Diana to her own arachnophobia. Whatever the topic, her fierce intelligence and formidable wit are always on display. Particularly moving is "A Feeling for Ice," which Diski later expanded into a book, Skating to Antarctica (1999). She describes both a trip to Antarctica and her difficult childhood, and the connections she draws are surprising and profound. As Wilmer observes in the introduction, Diski "liked blankness of all kinds: white surfaces, uneventful days….A place that had never been looked at and never would be was best of all." However, in essays on celebrity worship, tabloids, and pop culture, Diski also wrote about the kind of bustling chaos that seemed to have become emblematic of contemporary life. Here, too, the author's prose has a crispness and clarity of expression that have been rarely matched. Within a single sentence she can exude both a seemingly effortless elegance and a fearless iconoclasm. For writers and readers alike, this new volume is a tremendous gift. The crystalline quality to these extraordinary essays confirms Diski as one of the most talented writers of her generation. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
