Why Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told?

"Diski wrote withering social criticism and had an outsize talent for distilling discomforting truths."

"She was fearless, as is evident in this peerless collection."

"This volume, which is so impressive for its odd turns and bright torpor, reminds me that walking is actually just falling forward ..."

"This wide-ranging collection is a tribute to her, and to her friend and editor Mary-Kay Wilmers, who brought out the best in her."

"[A] superb, and sadly posthumous, collection ..."

"Here, too, the author's prose has a crispness and clarity of expression that have been rarely matched."

"They were marvelously shrewd but approachable and witty."

"Fortunately, Jenny Diski is an absorbing, savagely witty, insatiably curious, and gifted writer."

"Suffice it to say that our culture, enmeshed as it is in carefully arranged snapshots of real life, needs Jenny Diski, who, by her own admission, 'never owned a camera, never taken one on holiday.'" It is all but impossible not to warm up to a writer who observes herself so keenly ..."

"As the anthology shows, though, Diski could make almost anything seem interesting."