I have great admiration for Margaret Forster's ability to fashion absorbing tales of family life from the most ordinary people in Precious Lives... Her insistence on validating the domestic, combined with her meticulous eye and painstaking research, creates a past which reveals modest lives with all their awkwardnesses and painful secrets.

Margaret Forster's books hold you in their grip and linger in the mind long after being put down...Precious Lives is unputdownable... A remarkably courageous book which we should read, inwardly digest and, above all, enjoy

Forster is a terrific writer, witty and compassionate... [Precious Lives] manages to be completely honest wihout compromising the delicacy of its subjects: it is moving and funny too

"Dying is an art," wrote Sylvia Plath. Writing about dying is also an art, one which Margaret Forster possesses in no small measure... [She] pursues her purpose with such flair that she succeeds, once again, in riveting her reader... Precious Lives adds up to an exemplary tribute to two striking individuals

Hugely relieved that I would not be required to do any man-hugging or shout, 'I'm a wonderful father' to myself in a mirror, I was then amazed at how quickly Lorraine helped me find clear solutions to my niggle. Though cringingly obvious now, the answers were not quite so clear when I was up to my eyeballs in toys, work, questions about kittens, sleepovers, friends, cooking, more questions about kittens, maintaining a meaningful and fulfilling relationship with my partner, whilst at the same time trying to be a fun, positive, kitty-loving role model at all times. Implement the changes and watch things improve - it's as simple as that.

Instead of prescriptive dos and don’ts to stop the little darlings from murdering each other, the authors suggest roles to suit different situations.

Thanks for the advice. I will definitely try these techniques.

With wit punctuating lambent nostalgia, Erica Heller brings her father to life in an animated, absorbing fashion, documenting his quirky habits, celebrity, and "invisible, unfathomable inner cycle," but also her parents' divorce and Heller's suffering with Guillain-Barre syndrome. The total effect is akin to leafing through a bulging family scrapbook where one finds a few blurry images among many snapshots in sharp focus. Erica Heller has inherited her father's finely tuned flair with words

Intimate, yet well-researched..comedic and poignant, her many-faceted memoir is rendered in high-definition as Heller recounts meals, travels, parties, arguments, lies, and the serious illnesses that afflicted her and her parents. Writing with wit, compassion, aplomb, and no little wonder at what her father wrought and her mother endured and how this legacy shaped her, Heller presents an involving and invaluable work of personal and cultural history.

Heller's family memoir brims with warm reflections right from the opening chapters... An affectionate family scrapbook crafted with a bittersweet blend of humor and pathos

Erica Heller to me is like a Carrie Fisher on the East Coast. She is as authentic as they come

Erica Heller has a story to tell and I for one am eager to see it in print. I think this is going to be one hell(er) of a memoir

The New York of the period leaps off the page

Heller's domestic side is evoked with painful detail by his daughter, Erica, in her well written, occasionally harrowing memoir, Yossarian Slept Here

Likeable memoir...just as Daugherty is blind to the limitations of Heller's work so he appears resistant to personal criticism of Heller or rebuke. Just One Catch is no hagiography but, of these two biographical accounts on Yossarian Slept Here gives us the gruff, arrogant big shot; the smug cocky fellow who sometimes showed up to friend's cocktail parties for the sheer fun of insulting them