Mary Norris’s Greek to Me is one of the most satisfying accounts of a great passion that I have ever read. It traces a decades-long obsession with Greece: its language (both modern and ancient), literature, mythologies, people, places, food and monuments — all with an absorption that never falters and never squanders the reader’s attention ... [Norris] mourns the centuries-long effort at developing punctuation for the sake of ever greater clarity, now being abandoned, day by day, in our benighted contemporary culture. This observation is only a reminder of what we all know; nevertheless, it stunned me ... Western women traveling to the Mediterranean in search of sensual experience is one of the great clichés I thought we had put behind us. This caveat aside, Norris’s irreverent reverence for the history of the Greek language is not only admirable, it is moving. When she writes, 'Ancient Greek is like the Bible (from βιβλος): records of the past that preserve the things that humans most need to know,”'you feel yourself in the presence of a traveler whose authority emanates from lived experience.
Norris is an OK travel writer, but she sparkles more when the subject is language. An unrepentant alphabetophile, she extols the life-changing magic of letters, which she finds far superior to hieroglyphs and emoji in their incomparable ability to communicate in writing ... You'll pick up all sorts of wonderful tidbits from this book ... Greek to Me, an ode to the joy of exercising free rein in one's life, is not as funny as Between You and Me, and Norris is not quite as convincing about the highs of psi as she is about the allure of Blackwing pencils. But what resonates in both books is the way ardent interests can enrich a life. Norris is an uncommonly engaging, witty enthusiast with a nose for delicious details and funny asides that makes you willing to follow her anywhere.
... a rapturous memoir of falling in love with a language ... lively ... From the first page, Norris reassures any readers who fear they’re about to inhale 3,000 years of dust ... Norris is often at her best when discussing the phenomenon of language: how words shape our experience ... Occasionally Norris’s attention to detail lapses into the encyclopedic. But at their best, these pages leave you feeling salt-kissed and freshly tanned, languorous with ouzo. Those needing a reason to pick up an ancient language will find much magic here to recommend the pursuit. For Norris, the argument for Greek is a personal one: It transformed her life. The muse sings.
... brims with nerdish joy in language, in how sentences are built – the way, for example, ancient Greek verbs hover like the apex of a pyramid above a pile of adjectives and nouns and the all-important particles, which are little shards of informal speech and are often tough to translate ... Norris is an eloquent advocate of the ethical value, too, of studying a foreign language, any foreign language ... Norris is a jaunty companion, splendidly bookish, full of excellent little facts about, say, the history of the alphabet that you feel pleased to acquire ... Some of the most pleasing passages concern her own travels around Greece and its islands...there’s also something more profound at play.
Part of [Norris's] considerable convivial appeal is rooted in her knack for picking up unconsidered linguistic trifles, giving them a quick verbal sleeve-polish, then turning them over to reveal their multifaceted gleam. In her second book, Greek to Me, she demonstrates this gift with still greater aplomb ... It is clear that Norris wishes to share Greek, and the joy she finds in it, with the lay reader and latent philhellene – not necessarily the committed classicist, but simply the person with an interest in the roots and hidden layers of words ... This infectious excitement should win over even the stuffiest of classicists ... Throughout the book, as though to avoid the peril of playing with words to the point where they lose their relevance to human life, Norris provides a vivid sense of physical, visceral experience.
[Norris's] enthusiasm is infectious, whether for diphthongs, mythology, ancient ruins or the sea ... Norris’ vibrant prose flies off the page, and the breadth of her material set my head spinning at times. Still, she brings it all together with insight and wisdom, giving us an understanding of the 'larger world out there' and, as she writes, 'different ways of saying things, hearing things, seeing things.'”
This book, though, on her attraction to ancient Greek, the Greek alphabet, and then modern Greek and Greece and Greeks, is a darker, messier book [than her previous book]—beach reading for classicists and philhellenes, perhaps, but with something more serious at stake. Aiming at times for slapstick, Ms. Norris keeps uncovering veins of tragedy ... The book’s arrangement feels more like a labyrinth, the reader sometimes doubling back, sometimes arriving at an earlier point, sometimes unsure of where it’s all heading ... Sometimes Ms. Norris’s conversational ease risks being too breezy for the page ... The last visit to Greece described in the book seems to have taken place in 2009, when the new Acropolis Museum opened. That may explain why Greek to Me has little to say about the economic crisis or the refugee crisis that have rocked Greece in the past decade.
The book is a delicious intersection of personal essays, etymology, and travel writing. Norris’ full Greek immersion pushed her out of her comfort zone and taught her much more than the history of the comma.
Greek to Me bursts with a cheerful lust for all things Hellenic: the language, ancient and modern; the mythology; the wine; the sunshine; the sea; and, occasionally, the men ... If you’re not much of a word nerd, Norris’ clear, down-to-earth writing still may appeal to you ... The author is good company whether she’s marveling at ancient mosaics on Paphos, struggling with Greek bureaucracy to let her see the home of philhellene author Patrick Leigh Fermor, or flirting with the sailors on the ferry to Crete.
... an entertaining, erudite, and altogether delightful journey fueled by the love of language ... For those who have long followed the Comma Queen, her latest outing will not disappoint.
