From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Ciment's spare and surprisingly gripping novel details one long weekend in the life of Ruth and Alex Cohen, an elderly New York couple hoping to sell their East Village apartment of 45 years. Ruth is a retired teacher and Chekhov devotee, and Alex is an artist, currently adding colorful illuminations to the couples' old FBI files. As they ready for an open house, a gas tanker truck gets stuck in the Midtown tunnel, seizing the city with gridlock and fear of a terrorist attack. (In scenes that border on parody, the local news adopts a Danger in the Tunnel graphic and runs viewer polls about whether terrorists take drugs.) Meanwhile, the Cohens' beloved dachshund, Dorothy, falls ill and has to be taken to an uptown animal hospital. As the real estate market swings in response to the news about the tanker, the Cohens wait for news about their dog and confront the reality of leaving their home. Ciment plays the veterinary, real estate and domestic details like elements of a thriller plot, while the couple's love of their dog provides heartrending texture—literature with commercial crossover.
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Review
“Read [it] for its painterly depictions of a rattled city, its deliciously biting satire of media and real estate madness, its tender knowledge of the creaturely ties that bind.” —
O, The Oprah Magazine
“If ever there was a book I would nominate for bestseller-dom it’s
Heroic Measures. It’s smart and funny and completely surprising. I’ve already bought a copy for everyone I know and I suggest you do the same. I loved every page.” —Ann Patchett
“A brave, generous, nearly perfect novel.” —
Los Angeles Times “A testament to Ciment’s lauded writing style. . . .
Heroic Measures will delight.” —
The Daily Beast“It all sounds so ordinary—dogs get sick; people want to move—yet in Ms. Ciment’s delicate hands, these characters become heroic in their small ways.” —
Wall Street Journal (a summer reading pick)
“A wry, gentle gem of a novel. . . . [Ciment] paints the world of Alex and Ruth in gentle, exquisite detail. Yet never does their world seem too tiny to be of interest to us. Their efforts to retain some grace as they struggle for life’s most basic desires—shelter and the safety of loved ones—are universal. . . . A lovely read.” —
Christian Science Monitor “It’s funny what books stick in one’s mind . . . with some lasting illumination the writer affords the reader. I doubt I’ll walk through the East Village again without thinking of [
Heroic Measures].” —Caitlin Macy,
The New York Times Book Review “[
Heroic Measures] has the faceted perfection and ardent chill of a snowflake. . . . A wonderfully shrewd and delicate book.” —
The Boston Globe “Every once in a while, someone writes a book that, on the surface, is simple and quiet, yet underneath is stirringly beautiful and full of life and love. Jill Ciment's new novel,
Heroic Measures, is this kind of book. . . . When you put
Heroic Measures down, you feel as if you've spent a lifetime immersed in Jill Ciment's remarkably touching and hopeful world.” —
The Globe and Mail
