Review
“Captures stalwart New Yorkers’ love/hate relationship with the world's most seductively dysfunctional town. There may be no better read to pass your wait for that next damned G train.” —
Will Hermes, author of Love Goes To Buildings On Fire"[These essays] celebrate life in New York City in that quintessentially New York way. They kvetch as much as they kvell. They lament the indignities even as they lionize the perks. With humor, candor, and often deep soulfulness, these writers capture the maddening, intoxicating promise that New Yorkers make to themselves every day: the promise that, despite the exasperation and exhaustion, it’s worth it." —
Meghan Daum, author of My Misspent Youth and The Unspeakable"These essays are a happy reminder of the eternal truths about New York: it smells like chicken innards; it's ripe for apocalypse; it's overpriced; it has more free stuff than anywhere else; it's dirty; it's too clean; it is the guy behind you on the subway pressing his erection into your leg; it blows doors on L.A. New York is over. Long live New York!" —
Nathaniel Rich, author of Odds Against Tomorrow"This fab book made me want to leave New York and then move the eff right back." (Gary Shteyngart)
"Never Can Say Goodbye is sharp, moving, often funny, and sometimes heartbreaking. A wonderful collection of love letters to a sublime and maddening city."—
Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven“Gets right to the heart of what it feels like to be a New Yorker--slightly insane, broke, and madly in love. These essays made me laugh out loud with recognition. New York City isn't an easy place to live, but is anything easy really worth doing?” —
Emma Straub, author of The Vacationers
About the Author
Sari Botton is the editor of the anthology
Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York and a writer whose work has appeared in
The New York Times,
New York Magazine,
The Sun,
The Village Voice,
Harper’s Bazaar,
More,
Marie Claire, and other publications. She is the editorial director of the TMI Project (TMIProject.org), a nonprofit organization that holds memoir and true storytelling workshops in jails, shelters, veterans’ hospitals, cancer wards, schools, and other places where people don’t usually get to tell their stories or be heard. Botton lives in upstate New York, where she still keeps a MetroCard in her wallet.
Contributions by Elizabeth Gilbert, Susan Orlean, Rosanne Cash, Phillip Lopate, Nick Flynn, Adelle Waldman, Colin Harrison, Owen King, Amy Sohn, Patricia Engel, Elliott Kalan, Jenna Wortham, Adam Sternbergh, Anna Holmes, Starlee Kine, Rachel Syme, Stephen Elliott, Julie Klam, Kathleen Hale, Isaac Fitzgerald, Alexander Chee, Porochista Khakpour, Maris Kreitzman, Jason Diamond, Brian Macaluso, and Jon-Jon Goulian.
