RaveThe Guardian... get past the icky profiles that have attended Andrew Solomon - Prozac\'s doe-eyed poster boy - and you find an exemplary text. Solomon is one of those New Yorker-trained writers who can charm the peacocks onto the lawn with mere statistical ballast; he is acutely aware of the contradictions at every turn of his tale, and the investigative reporter in him overrides the easier impulse to self-dramatisation. His own pain serves as a conduit to wider quandaries, where too many writers remain hypnotised by the dark mirror of disclosure ... Solomon is scrupulously inclusive - like a wise Narcotics Anonymous chairperson, who leads strangers straight to the most pertinent part of their story, the parts of speech that are both messily singular and chimingly common. The Noonday Demon is formidably well researched: Solomon has a particularly keen touch with quotations and the testimony of others, building up a rich polylogue where other writers have settled for stark midnight soliloquy ... takes what is a depressingly familiar tale, and makes it speak lessons of far wider import.
Elvis Costello
MixedThe GuardianIf there is a problem with this book it may be that, while Costello does a great job of showing us the man (or several men) he was back then, I’m not sure he comes close to explaining what was going on inside him – why he did what he did and sang what he sang.
