PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewShopsin, wary of making her novel read like an engineering manual, even with the riveting drama of industrial design hitches, takes a creative approach, anthropomorphizing the machine’s innards in reaction to an invasive repair ... Shopsin...is clearly on comfortable ground, ambling through Claire’s existential quest in short sentences and choppy paragraphs, which create a tense rhythm, even when describing the activity around the office fish tank ... side trips down geek memory lane will delight many an elder-nerd pining for the days when Apple was still a feisty little outlier punching up in a Windows PC world, and not the $2 trillion Big Tech Bigfoot it is today. Readers wanting a more linear narrative (or those never indoctrinated into the Cult of Mac) may get fidgety with the diversions, even as context for Claire’s story ... Shopsin has a gift for capturing the minute details of a specific era in ever-evolving New York City ... It’s a crisp redraw of a time when Apple Computer was the rebellious choice, poor rebels could afford to live in the Big Apple and—in more ways than one—people found themselves offline.
Carrie Fisher
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewIt may not be great writing, but it’s an empathy tractor beam ... it feels invasive to be reading the [teenage diary] material, even with her permission. The present-day reflections wrapped around either side of the diary section are livelier and echo the style of her previous memoirs ... In trying to establish separation from this movie character that’s been fused to her for two-thirds of her existence, Fisher offers a thoughtful, sardonic meditation on the price of fame, cost-of-living adjustments included.
