"A lively, vivid account of how the most innocent details of a writer's personal story can gain power in fiction." - New York Times Book Review

"Profound." - Los Angeles Times

"[Levy] is a skilled wordsmith and creates an array of intense emotions and moods in precise, controlled prose." - The Independent (UK)

"A vivid, striking account of a writer's life." - The Spectator (UK)

"Powerful." - New Statesman (UK)

"An up-to-date version of 'A Room of One's Own', and, like the Virginia Woolf essay, I suspect it will be quoted for many years to come." - Irish Examiner

"Levy successfully weaves historical, political, and personal threads together to form a nuanced account of her life and why she writes. Her graceful memoir/essay emphasizes a woman's need to speak out even if she has to use a quiet voice. For feminists and memoir enthusiasts." - Library Journal

"Rather than, say, telling the reader to show rather than tell, [Levy] declines to tell us anything and then shows us a great deal. What results is much more valuable than any literal writing guide or any literal response to Orwell would have been. It certainly has greater political import." - Biographile

"Few essayists have the courage and talent to go head-to-head with George Orwell. Deborah Levy's response to Orwell's iconic piece "Why I Write" is at once a feminist call to arms, a touching memoir of small moments, and a guide to writing fiction from one of literature's bravest rulebreakers." - Barnes & Noble Review