His memoir is good but modestly so. It contains a great deal of black comedy but its most impressive emotion is regret — for things undone and unsaid earlier in his life ... Remorse runs through this memoir’s veins like tracer dye. Kureishi stares hard at himself ... We confront the bare wood beneath the bark of Kureishi’s best earlier writing. But he is good and bracing company on the page. His book is never boring. He offers frank lessons in resilience, about blowing the sparks that are still visible, about ringing the bells that still can ring.
Its tone is freewheeling and informal. Kureishi’s meditations are wide-ranging ... Free-associative, and some of its chains of association are more compelling than others ... Art should 'frighten, if not alarm.' I am glad this book does.
Candid and frequently affecting ... Not a catalog of constant woes. Mr. Kureishi blends in thoughts and meditations on a variety of topics ... As with the best of his fiction, Mr. Kureishi suffuses his memoir with humor.
