Improbably funny. . . equally remarkable.
-- Steve Donoghue * Open Letters Monthly *
Can you imagine writing a whole book about being forbidden to do anything other than lie in bed? But Betty does, and she somehow makes it a riveting chronicle.
-- Lory Widmer Hess * Emerald City Book Review *
An appetizing, well-seasoned feast. MacDonald's sharp, witty observations as she spends almost a year in The Pines Clinic, outside of Seattle, are perfectly pitched to satisfy readers of memoirs and historical and journalistic fiction, with a huge dollop of idiosyncratic humour. It more than satisfies, in fact, because MacDonald is an impressive and engaging storyteller.
-- Jules Morgan * The Lancet *
MacDonald writes about her seclusion in a way that is painfully, barkingly funny. . . . Her style is completely her own, the sprawling sentences packed with anecdote, incident, bang-on simile and throwaway wit-it's like overhearing a conversation between someone who keeps forgetting to breathe and another who keeps asking 'and what happened next?
-- Lissa Evans * Guardian *
