MixedThe Guardian (UK)More broadly, it feels as if we are being directed to read the book through a feminist lens ... but Mina’s problems don’t stem, in any immediate way, from the patriarchy ... Building a novel around a depressed character places enormous pressure on the author to compellingly evoke bleak and repetitive mind states. The problem with Starling Days is that Mina’s inner life is fairly banal. She keeps a list of the reasons why her presence on Earth is pointless ... She compares her sorrows with those of children in war zones, and deems herself spoiled ... There are indications that Buchanan is a better writer than this work would suggest ... But they are overshadowed by the novel’s weaker elements ... For readers looking for a \'relatable\' tale of struggle and survival – the author includes an encouraging note at the end for those fighting their own darkness – the book offers consolation. For those wishing to derive more literary pleasures, Starling Days may disappoint.
John Jeremiah Sullivan
RaveThe Irish TimesSullivan’s strengths as an essayist are many. There is an intellect capable of digesting facts and currents, and conveying, in conversational tones, what they really tell us; he can do workmanlike journalism and he can do goofy. There’s a laid-back warmth, infused with humour. There is the sense of shared discovery – a kind of you’ll-never-guess-what-Bunny-Wailer-
did-next sort of thing – and a refreshing refusal to sneer ... Music is a passion, and while the essays on Rose, Bunny Wailer, Michael Jackson and the early blues are compelling, the best in the collection are those that are both personally engaged and that explore the question of why the US is the way it is ... If Sullivan has a weakness, it may be the occasional reluctance to shed a certain glibness when doing so could allow something richer to emerge ... But it is virtually impossible not to love this collection. Informed by both gonzo and immersion journalism, the essays are somehow gentler and more modest in their bearing, less self-
involved than what one might expect from long-form journalism written by someone with comic and literary sensibilities. If one can say so, they wear their author’s presence lightly, ferrying the reader along, charming, erudite.
