PositiveThe Women’s Review of BooksIn Silence, an insightful social history, Jane Brox examines the experiences of individuals whose silence is enforced...a deeply-researched history ... [acknowledges] the possibility of redemptive healing by escaping silently from a noisy, insistently distracting world into one’s thoughts, memories, and observations. There may be richness in the unspoken and, as Brox suggests, \'the opportunity for a true reckoning with the self, with external obligation, and with power.\' ... \'To listen fully,\' Brox writes, \'requires silence. To engage in meaningful conversation requires silence.\'
Joanna Scutts
RaveNewsday...[a] smart, informative and insightful cultural history ... Scutts underscores the advice common to generations of self-help books — and emerging, also, in contemporary fables like Sex and the City: women had to change themselves to catch a man and hold him, an exhausting, all-consuming effort to win what Scutts calls 'the dubious, high-stakes game of marriage.' Hillis offered a brave counterpoint to that message. And though her advice about bed jackets and bubble baths seems quaint today, her celebration of solitude, independence and integrity is, as Scutts reminds us, worth reviving.
Ross King
RaveNewsday...[a] sensitive, deeply researched and altogether delightful biography ... Georges Clemenceau emerges as the indefatigable bright spirit of this biography and of Monet’s life.
Janice Y. K. Lee
PositiveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneLee's serene, muted tone occasionally falls flat, but more often gently conveys her sad characters' loneliness, suffering and anguish.
Lillian Ross
PositiveMinneapolis Star TribuneA few of this book's early reports seem dated, as if describing another world...But most of these smart, generous and closely observed pieces are simply delightful.
