PanThe New York Times Book ReviewThe book is a mounted defense of the honor of a word that, she says, everyone uses—which is doubtless true. But when Reynolds writes that \'seemingly no word in the English language has come under as much fire,\' it’s less convincing ...
Like is framed as a rebuttal to complaints about the use of the word—but just who is this enemy constantly bashing its usage? Grammarians who live to nitpick? Someone from 1982? Barring a few discrete examples—a 2016 essay on CNN.com, for instance—the \'naysayers,\' \'prescriptivists\' and \'general sticks in the mud\' are not clearly established.
Reynolds does write that every woman she spoke to in the course of her research—she’s prone to such anecdotal statements—has at some point been made to feel badly about using the word. \'Like must work against the pervasive myth that it is a meaningless word, a word that makes women sound dumb,\' she writes. She emphasizes the point repeatedly: To hate on the word is to show a bias against women, youth and marginalized people. Maybe a book with a wider lens, in celebration of the language of those groups, might have felt more worthy of a full-length exploration ... But narrow though her focus is, Reynolds wants to explore only so much etymology. She can’t seem to decide whom she wants to represent to the reader: Is she a curious explorer, a translator or one of us? ... By the time Reynolds spends a few pages recounting the time she woke up in her apartment to a strange man asking for someone named Sarah, it’s hard not to agree with her therapist, who, Reynolds notes, often tells her to get to the point. If she is as concerned with language as she claims to be, then why waste so much of it? ... She concludes that there are other things these scolds should be worrying about. Sure, but, like, then why does she care so much?
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review[Klein] relishes illustrating the power dynamics at play in burgeoning art scenes ... While Gala Dalí comes off as fascinating and enigmatic, Gerber Klein makes it clear that her subject was willfully unknowable.
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewContains some amusing historical accounts ... The book is laden with references to very recent history; topics that were obviously the talk of le tout internet at the time of writing but already feel dated ... I...lost track of what the point was ... Much juicier are the anonymous anecdotes and vignettes slipped between chapters, which serve to illustrate how gossip is used in real life ... The essays don’t dig deep enough into her ambivalence about gossip to come away with any big ideas.
Lili Anolik
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewDidion remains a slippery figure. In fact, the author dubiously claims that the only way to see Didion is through the \'glass\' of Babitz ... The author is unafraid of sounding like a besotted teenager ... Throughout the book Anolik’s tone is self-conscious and conspiratorial, which at first feels like gossipy fun, as if she’s writing beyond the male gaze, the book both taking itself very seriously and not seriously at all. But the podcast-speak...loses its charm quickly ... Anolik doesn’t need such stylistic indulgences to bring the reader in; she is a thorough reporter with an ear for humorous detail ... It’s a promise that never pays off. Didion feels like a supporting character in the book and their rivalry feels entirely one-sided. You end up wondering if Didion thought about Babitz much at all.
Ina Garten
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe Jeffrey hagiography finally ends and a more powerful portrait of a marriage emerges. It would have been easy for Garten to gloss over this part of her life, or to omit it all together. But it’s truly inspiring to read how they gradually come back together ... She has created an inviting and relaxing world that’s the equivalent of one of her cocktail recipes.
James Polchin
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewPolchin knows the era, and brings to his account a wealth of colorful supporting detail ... For all its lurid trappings, the sensationalistic story ends up feeling a bit dry — and we never find out exactly what this important family was hiding.
Jill Burke
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewA breezy and readable portrait of 16th-century Italy through the lens of beauty standards and practices ... The details are fascinating. The main challenge for this reader is keeping track of the many, many women mentioned, whose names and lives often receive just a few sentences or pages. Burke would have benefited from chiseling more of a narrative from her copious research, and including fewer rapid-fire anecdotes.
Damien Lewis
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewLewis employs careful language to hedge the title’s bold assertion ... Lewis is a verbose writer who can dedicate myriad pages to his own biography...At times, he makes himself sound like the Indiana Jones of archival research, imbuing the process with drama ... Lewis’s assertion — that for Baker, the unconditional love of animals was probably easier than relationships with humans — is both simplistic and probably accurate. Either way, he quickly moves on from this unusual foray into psychological analysis to return to his literary strengths, facts and action ... Sometimes it feels as if Lewis is content to accept the narrative that Baker consciously created for herself ... France is idealized...Lewis unquestioningly accepts the assertion, an overly simplistic and frankly inaccurate view of a country that struggles with race to this day ... A fascinating subject at a pivotal time in her life, Baker still doesn’t come alive on the page and remains unknowable. Maybe her ability to conceal and charm are why she was so good at espionage, but Lewis doesn’t take much time to explore the question of how she conceived of her own story ... What is compelling is the ragtag, oddly posh crew of supporting characters who surround her in her adventures ... Does it really matter if Josephine Baker was a particularly active member of the French Resistance, or an actual spy? Not to the French government. In the end, she earned the Medaille de la Résistance Avec Palme, the Croix de Guerre and the Legion d’Honneur, and was buried in the Pantheon. All the accouterments, in short, of a true French heroine.
