Her re-examination of the stories offers rewards for new readers as well as ardent fans ... Most affecting when its author describes how her relationship with her father has deepened since his death.
She aims to help us read Cheever’s best stories...she provides welcome context, clues to her father’s very particular genius ... As a writer and a daughter of a writer, she’s also exploring the wellsprings of creativity, which she does with openhearted elegance.
Part memoir, part college seminar close-reading exercise...and all wry, twinkling delight ... Some of the pleasure of When All the Men Wore Hats is simple industry gossip.
A testament of struggle. The force of the emotions held in for so long buckles the prose and pushes up unanswerable questions ... When All the Men Wore Hats is at times jagged and uncomfortable; digesting such a father is no easy task. But by reading the life through the stories and the stories through the life, she has found a way to honour both her truth and his art, and to write John Cheever in the round: a vulnerable, maddening, devious, brilliant, loving, damaged man.
In graceful prose, her latest work probes deeper, examining their relationship and his internal landscape ... By turns affectionate and admiring but also clear-sighted and unsparing, she focuses primarily on six of his most memorable stories ... An eloquent and fully immersive portrait of a renowned author.
