‘My regard for Charmian Clift veers uncomfortably close to veneration, which appals me. The figure of Clift as a messy morality tale about what happens when you run off to be a writer comes at the expense of the work she produced, which is to the contrary searing in its clarity. This collection is a reminder of the work behind the legend: her bent, her conviction, and her cool. And the sentences! Clift’s essays evince an ardent attention to life in all its vagaries, which is really the most a person can give.’
Ellena Savage, author of Blueberries

‘When I first stumbled on Clift’s essays, twenty or more years ago, these trashy essays written for a disposable occasion seemed to me to have more lightning and quicksilver, more brilliance and more skill of execution, than any Australian writing other than the great novels of Patrick White and Christina Stead.’
Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald

‘Charmian Clift was ahead of her time and yet also representative of them. Her essays are a fascinating, thoughtful – sometimes judgemental, sometimes lyrical – window into an Australia on the brink of change. Whether you always agree with her opinions or not, she writes like a dream and her voice is wry, insightful and self-aware. It is lovely to see her gaining the recognition she has long deserved.’
Jane Caro, Walkley Award winning columnist and author

‘Reading these essays, it’s easy to see why Clift became a cult figure. The chatty, charming and sometimes slightly dippy persona distracts attention just enough from the steely intelligence, the sophisticated sentence structure and the passion for causes that characterise these pieces but might otherwise rather have alarmed her readers … In an era that hadn’t yet thought too much about these things, her columns demonstrated that a woman … could and should be an active citizen of the world.’
Kerryn Goldsworthy, Australian Book Review

‘From the women’s pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, among advertisements for wrinkle cream and mini-skirts...Clift challenged a complacent society, fashioned a sly and elegant sedition: opposing Vietnam, unmasking materialism, championing equality for women.’
Mark Tredinnick, The Book Bulletin