Home › Books › Why Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told?
Why Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told?
by
97/99
Critics' Rating Index
40/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
95/99
Volume of Reviews
36/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
A collection of the best of the indomitable Jenny Diski's essays, selected London Review of Books editor Mary-Kay Wilmers.Jenny Diski was a fearless writer, for whom no subject was too difficult, even her own cancer diagnosis. Her columns in the London Review of Books selected here by her editor and friend Mary-Kay Wilmers, on subjects as various as death, motherhood, sexual politics and the joys of solitude have been described as "virtuoso performances," and "small masterpieces."From Highgate Cemetery to the interior of a psychiatric hospital, from Tottenham Court Road to the icebergs of Antarctica, Why Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told? is a collective interrogation of the universal experience from a very particular psyche: original, opinionated and mordantly funny.
Reviews
"Diski takes an almost triumphantly dissatisfied, even irascible, approach ..."
"while devoid of encouragement or advice or a style that anyone could imitate, its thirty-three pieces...still impart a strange sense of possibility."
"With an afterword by her daughter, Chloe Diski, this is a must for Diski admirers and all essay lovers."
"Fortunately, Jenny Diski is an absorbing, savagely witty, insatiably curious, and gifted writer."
"She made stuffy waiting rooms a little brighter ..."
"In her autobiographical writings Diski displays a gift for ruthless self-examination as well as a need to confront the unacceptable and explore the unknowable ..."
"She is discerning about serious topics (madness and death) as well as less fraught material, such as fashion ..."
"And her essays – dare I say it – earn a blessing even when what they consider is cursed."
"She found asylum in the LRB."
"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: To miss these essays would be a shame."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!