Going into Town

Starred review from July 3, 2017
Brooklyn-born Chast follows up her emotional National Book Award finalist memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant with an expanded version of a guide to Manhattan she made for her college-bound daughter, which enlightens readers on the finer and sometimes obscure points of what makes New York City a vibrant and often loony landscape. Multiple aspects of the city are lovingly examined and lampooned, with a matter-of-fact intimacy that could only come from a native New Yorker, from the bad—why not to get on an empty subway car—to the grand—the expanses of Central Park. Observations and advice on making one’s way through the city’s diversions are mixed with the quirky character that oozes from the metropolis’s every concrete pore. It’s all delivered with obvious and knowing affection and captured with a keenly observant pen.

November 1, 2017

Chast's (Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?) lighthearted tribute to her hometown began as an introduction to the city for her daughter, who was headed to college there. Although a longtime suburbia resident, Chast conjures up a unique vision of New York, as fans of her New Yorker cartoons might expect. Talking standpipes, restaurants selling "gluten-free pho," the worm's nest of subway and utility tunnels beneath the sidewalk, paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art visualized with puckish word balloons, those "West Side Story things" (fire escapes)--there's nothing for Chast not to marvel over about Manhattan. "I really like density of visual information," she says, and her Big Apple cityscapes burst with jumbled buildings, oddities of every variety, and her trademark loose-edged-drawn people. This full-color prose-comics hybrid covers city layout, getting around, things to do and see, food, and apartment life. VERDICT There are New Yorkers, New Yorker wannabes, New York visitors, and the New York curious--so expect demand for Chast's whimsical and helpful smorgasbord of urban goofiness. For another New York perspective, see Julia Wertz's Tenements, Towers & Trash (Xpress Reviews, 9/1/17). [Previewed in Douglas Rednour's "Comics Cross Over," LJ 6/15/17.--Ed.]--MC

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2017

Chast follows Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, the National Book Critics Circle Award winner that dwelled on the New York Times best sellers list for more than 100 weeks, with a "love letter" to New York. Here, she recounts her shock upon moving to the suburbs (you have to drive) and her children's awe whenever they visit the city (where they see "those West Side Story things," generally called fire escapes). Like a visit to the Big Apple, without the subway delays.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 15, 2017
The highly regarded New Yorker cartoonist lets readers see the city she loves through her eyes.As Chast (Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, 2014, etc.) notes early on, this isn't a guidebook--though it could help Manhattan newcomers navigate the streets and the subways. The narrative is really about how an artist sees and how New York is such a treasure trove for the senses. "Maybe one day you will notice the amazing variety of standpipes," writes the author on one of the pages illustrated with photos rather than drawings. "The more you notice them...the more you will see." So it is with the rest of Manhattan, where there is so much to discover; even an artist with a sharp eye and a discerning sensibility can never come close to exhausting the inspiration. Chast explains that she left her native Brooklyn for suburbia for the usual family reasons--an affordable house, better schools, neighborhood safety--but that her love for the city has never diminished. She began this work "as a small booklet I made for my daughter before she left her home in Suburbia to attend college in Manhattan." The result mixes some of the practical advice she must have offered her daughter with a bit of memoir and plenty of sociocultural observation (though she pays less attention to the city's people than its resources and attractions). Chast makes development as an artist and her experience in the city seem inseparable. "I've always preferred cities to Nature," she writes. "I am interested in the person-made. I like to watch and eavesdrop on people. And I really like DENSITY OF VISUAL INFORMATION." Such density--and the details of visual information--consistently informs her work. The author also underscores the point that even Central Park, that leafy oasis that comprises 6 percent of the island, is actually man-made: "It contains lots of Nature, but is no more 'natural' than an arrangement of flowers from your neighborhood florist." Chast's voice and vision make this a singular love letter to a singular city.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.