Reviews for Book of Days
"And then, as if Montaigne's hand were on my shoulder, I discovered Emily Fox Gordon's Book of Days. I had read a nice review of them in The Economist, but had presumed they'd be nicely written, light, amusing, and disposable, but that's not it all: these are not blogs wrapped up in a nice blue cover... There are jokes in Book of Days, but the writing is precise, the thinking is complicated and original, and just about every subject she chooses -- faculty wives, her relationship with Kafka, her niece's wedding -- somehow enables her to pitch for something rich and important. If you are interested in writing and marriage...then she has things to say that I have never read elsewhere, and that I will be thinking about and possibly even re-reading for some time to come."
--Nick Hornby's "What I've Been Reading" column, The Believer, Nov/Dec 2010
"This new collection of her work...is stunning, not only in the beauty and precision of the language, but also in the author's willingness to revisit events in her life -- even ones she's already written about -- and to change her mind about them. Though each essay stands alone, the book as a whole traces the path of a woman becoming a writer."
—The Boston Globe
"Gordon is a keen and intelligent observer with a sharp gift for description...She also has an uncanny ability to view herself with the cool appraisal of a stranger."
—The Dallas Morning News
"tartly and honestly...Gordon dissects female friendship, femininity and feminism, and the changing state of marriage... fresh and amusingly self-lacerating..."
--New Your Times Book Review - Editor's Choice
"Ms. Gordon like to be gently coy about the profession she happened upon in middle age, casting her eyes down as if she were a pacifist or a vegetarian. But it is all part of a game. Behind her lashes Ms. Gordon knows full well that she has the heart of a hunter: she has been firing with both barrels since page one."
--The Economist
"Emily Fox Gordon is funny and very very smart, and this collection of her essays sparkles with both qualities."
--Newsday
“The best of these ten essays combine the details of memory with reflective insight and a command of tone that resists cliché, while refusing to settle into simplistic understanding. … Whether she’s explaining her affinity for Kafka or exploring the tribal rituals of faculty wives—her husband is a professor, as her father was—Gordon writes with flinty humor, unsentimental precision and a refusal to let herself or anyone else off too easily.”
--Kirkus
--Nick Hornby's "What I've Been Reading" column, The Believer, Nov/Dec 2010
"This new collection of her work...is stunning, not only in the beauty and precision of the language, but also in the author's willingness to revisit events in her life -- even ones she's already written about -- and to change her mind about them. Though each essay stands alone, the book as a whole traces the path of a woman becoming a writer."
—The Boston Globe
"Gordon is a keen and intelligent observer with a sharp gift for description...She also has an uncanny ability to view herself with the cool appraisal of a stranger."
—The Dallas Morning News
"tartly and honestly...Gordon dissects female friendship, femininity and feminism, and the changing state of marriage... fresh and amusingly self-lacerating..."
--New Your Times Book Review - Editor's Choice
"Ms. Gordon like to be gently coy about the profession she happened upon in middle age, casting her eyes down as if she were a pacifist or a vegetarian. But it is all part of a game. Behind her lashes Ms. Gordon knows full well that she has the heart of a hunter: she has been firing with both barrels since page one."
--The Economist
"Emily Fox Gordon is funny and very very smart, and this collection of her essays sparkles with both qualities."
--Newsday
“The best of these ten essays combine the details of memory with reflective insight and a command of tone that resists cliché, while refusing to settle into simplistic understanding. … Whether she’s explaining her affinity for Kafka or exploring the tribal rituals of faculty wives—her husband is a professor, as her father was—Gordon writes with flinty humor, unsentimental precision and a refusal to let herself or anyone else off too easily.”
--Kirkus