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Why Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told?
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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
"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 could be a pitiless takedown artist, especially when reviewing books about formidable women who were eclipsed by the men in their lives ..."
"A collection of essays by a master of the form ..."
"With an afterword by her daughter, Chloe Diski, this is a must for Diski admirers and all essay lovers."
"while devoid of encouragement or advice or a style that anyone could imitate, its thirty-three pieces...still impart a strange sense of possibility."
"I, in turn, wish there were more people around who thought like Diski."
"This effortlessly readable posthumous essay collection from Diski (1947–2016) shows her at her best ..."
"This book lacks, alas, an index."
"It is also almost always political."
"As the anthology shows, though, Diski could make almost anything seem interesting."
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