PositiveAir MailI found myself wishing for a greater helping of Sittenfeld’s dark humor ... I wonder if the author, having decided to set a novel in the world of comedy, may have second-guessed her instincts. Some of the jokes here are undercut by apologies ... By the end, I was rooting for the two of them to make it to the romantic finish line. Noah, though, may be more of a woman’s fantasy of a man than a fully fleshed out (sparring) partner for Sally ... Sittenfeld, with this diverting and easily devoured novel, may have scored an overdue victory of sorts for gender parity.
Erin Somers
MixedThe New York Times Book Review\"... taut and incisive ... a tender, if occasionally joyless, portrait of bizarro-world comedy writers who wish everyone would knock it off with all the joking around already ... Somers is clear — exquisitely, wrenchingly so — when articulating Bloom’s lifelong fixation on Best...\
Abbi Jacobson
PositiveThe New York Review of Books\"This is not just a book about a cross-country road trip. It is also very much the cross-country road trip of books: a meandering adventure in which the main draw is spending time with the person in the driver’s seat ... But not every roadside attraction is a must-see. The drawings of figs and protein bars and David Bowie record covers interspersed throughout the book give the impression of twee jetsam. It seems like artistic malpractice — or the setup to a joke about millennials — to drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains and put pencil to paper to capture the spectacular natural beauty of … an episode of \'The West Wing\' she’s just watched on an iPad ... For the most part, though, Jacobson is interested in talking about the things most readers are interested in hearing about ... That said, not even Jacobson possesses the literary prowess or the personality that would be required to sell readers on a minute-by-minute breakdown of insomnia ... And [establishing a small, meaningful connection with a stranger] is exactly what [Jacobson has] done here, with each one of her readers.\
