Hey, we're talking to you here--do you mind getting off your cellphone? That's more like it. The author of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" (we hope we punctuated that correctly) returns with an examination of a societal phenomenon even worse than bad grammar: bad manners.
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph John Preston
Highly perceptive, passionately argued and extremely funny.
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Outstanding
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Library Journal M.C. Duhig
Truss examines the death of civil language, the transfer of customer service from those who serve the customers to the customers themselves, the refusal to live by any rules but one's own, the pervasiveness of profanity, the dismissal of criticism, and the universal lack of responsibility. Each examination is not merely an opportunity to rant but a thoughtful and well-researched effort to understand the behavior. [1 Nov 2005, p. 102]
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Outstanding
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Gale Zoe Garnett
The best thing about this articulate, frequently funny rant is that you can shout back at the book (if you are alone) and take comfort in knowing that the ways in which we collide and/or dismiss are not noticed by each of us alone. To use one of my least-favourite expressions, Thank you, Lynne Truss, for sharing. [19 Nov 2005]
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Favorable
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The Guardian
Truss is clearly keen to cement her highly profitable status as a grumpy old woman and scourge of modern sloppiness.
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Favorable
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The Independent Susie Boyt
Talk to the Hand does occasionally read like a thank-you letter extended ambitiously to the second side of the notepaper. Yet it addresses an important subject with intelligence and humour, and for that we should certainly be grateful.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Michael Bywater
Anyone who has a sense of "the utter bloody rudeness of everyday life" will identify with much of the Truss jeremiad, which, as a piece of pleasingly wrathful social documentary, is on far firmer ground than her Eats, Shoots and Leaves, which was mostly a bewailing of tempora mutantur.
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Favorable
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The Onion A.V. Club Tasha Robinson
A fun, quick read as well as a smart one.
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Favorable
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The Spectator Philip Hensher
A faintly apocalyptic scenario where manners, concern, the imaginative sympathy which underlies any kind of good manners are all on the decline. [29 Oct 2005, p. 40]
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Mixed
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USA Today Bob Minzesheimer
For a book on manners, Truss does a lot of yelling.
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Mixed
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Wall Street Journal John Derbyshire
This kind of material makes a good newspaper opinion column, or even an eight-page magazine article, but becomes wearying at book length.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Bob Morris
Beyond her comic ranting and frenetic fuming, Truss makes a sincere and well-researched attempt to shed light on the dismal decorum of this darkest age. If she fails at the task, she does so winningly.
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Mixed
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Los Angeles Times Patt Morrison
"Talk to the Hand" is a book that should have been shorter and funnier--or longer and more serious. [11 Dec 2005]
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Mixed
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Publishers Weekly
Truss expounds on [her] themes with fine ire, mordant humor and many examples, but it must be said that the result is not so much a book as a heavily padded magazine article.
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Unfavorable
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The New York Times Janet Maslin
A promising-looking volume that turns out to be a thin and crabby diatribe.
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