PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewGrace Adams is...the latest in a series of brilliant, beautiful and privileged protagonists...undone by the challenges of modern womanhood ... Littlewood taps effectively into the fear and confusion of parenting teens ... I may be proving the author’s point by noting that her central character can be hard to root for.
Beth Nguyen
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewA portrait of things left unsaid ... Nguyen seems aware that her anxieties are small in comparison to the existential sacrifice her family made. But this is a memoir for those late-night moments: deeply ruminative and therapeutically self-indulgent.
Ross Douthat
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewDouthat sees symbols everywhere; he is telling a story not only of his own illness, but also about the stories we tell ourselves, secular and religious, to make sense of illness. This makes him a self-aware narrator. He knows he has resources many suffering patients don’t — including the benefit of the doubt not afforded the older women who tend to report chronic Lyme symptoms ... Writhing in pain on the bathroom floor, breaking down halfway through a speech or stumbling into empty churches to pray for relief, Douthat lays himself bare in ways that can be affecting. He is no braver for sharing his story than the women who have written Lyme memoirs before him...Still, in today’s hypermasculine conservative culture — where illness is a sign of weakness — this book is a near-radical act of humility. He makes his case that tick-borne disease needs more research and its sufferers deserve more respect ... The trouble is that Douthat also wants to present his reckless journey as a road map ... That this \'I’ll do my own research; sentiment is of the moment does not make it less damaging. On the contrary, a pandemic is the least helpful time to argue for the primacy of patient-designed protocols and internet anecdotes over actual science — imperfect, slow and unfeeling as it may be. Even in 2021, not everyone is an epidemiologist.
