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kaelynmerrithew's review
1.0
I had high hopes for this book, but not a single vignette/journal entry made me feel anything. Maybe if I was from Chicago, I’d get it, but from an outsiders point of view this book was just lacklustre and self-indulgent.
twentysixarias's review
3.0
I was looking forward to this book, but I just couldn't connect with it. Stopped at 30% on my Kindle. I want to say it was because I don't have much of a connection with Chicago or the places she was talking about. I think I expected this book to be much more similar to one of Anthony Bourdain's books (for some reason?), where she's talks about her years in Chicago but weaves characters throughout and discusses the different places with significance, but describing them to the readers who haven't seen them themselves. She didn't do that, so I didn't cling on to what she was saying.
andreaj's review
2.0
I am torn about this one. It was very authentic, very raw (in a good way), but it also never brought me into that world. I felt like I was reading Hopper's diary or maybe notes is a better word, because there was nothing salacious in here. As a former punk rock kid I thought that was immediately going to identify and become engrossed, instead, I just felt like I was watching the characters from across the street.
zachkuhn's review
5.0
Imperfect but I'm giving it a five because i ate it up in large handfulls. Chicago is the star, and it's a Chicago I remember as a tourist who lived 25 miles away for most of the years covered in this epistolary outoforder beauty.
celina_r's review
4.0
4.5 stars. Like all scene books, this might not be relevant to anyone who wasn't there. I sort of was: mostly in DC not Chicago, and I was more bougie and abjectly peripheral while Ms. Hopper seems to have been right in it. I was close enough to appreciate what she does here (everybody's old journal should be this well written) and to mourn the passing of the city as a place for a particular kind of freedom.
wskent's review
5.0
good lord. my whole self aches for chicago after reading this. i've met a kindred spirit in these pages.
zarap's review
medium-paced
2.25
There were a few luminescent lines/moments, but largely I didn't care that much about what was being recounted, and the writing didn't make me care.