PositiveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)Cohen’s refreshingly simple approach differs from much psychoanalytic criticism ... Treating characters like real people is perhaps the biggest taboo in literary studies; Cohen’s book quietly busts it ... How to Live. What to Do might seem an oddly dogmatic title. But Cohen is taking his cue from a poem by Wallace Stevens, which \'announces a didactic agenda\' only to \'withhold\' it. By the end of this wonderful book, we have learned to read its title not as a prescription but as a set of questions. Neither novels nor psychoanalysis promise to finally answer those questions. Instead, they invite us to look and listen—and to live in a way that lets us keep asking.
