RaveLiterary Review (UK)[A] puckish eulogy to this often overlooked appendage ... If indexes are so useful, why don’t novels have them? With his eagerness to scurry down each and every rabbit hole, a tendency that makes this book a trove of bookish anecdote, Duncan unearths examples of novelists using them as fictive playthings ... And what of this wittily engaging, wide-ranging book’s own index? Duncan playfully offers two, the first generated by computer. Surprisingly entertaining, it chops the book into small chunks and regurgitates it almost at book length. Duncan pulls the plug at the entry for ‘amusement, mere’ and hands it over to a human indexer, Paula Clarke Bain, who shows how the job ought to be done, with some amusing running gags thrown in for good measure.
