Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Awards 2016
A New York Times Notable Book 2016
‘Diski was a spare, beautiful, economical writer … In Gratitude is the book of a born fighter that will last far beyond 2016’ Ruth Scurr, Wall Street Journal Books of the Year
‘She remembers her adolescence with a miraculous fidelity of present to past feeling, but the view is from outside too: she was a tough customer, a precocious pest, and lucky to get out alive. Accurate memory here resists every temptation of pride; and because she has no interest in charming the reader, Diski is equal to her great subject’ David Bromwich, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year
‘As the scenes of her traumatic and chaotic childhood pass she reminds us, sentence by sentence, not only that she emerged to become every bit the writer she always dreamed of being, but also that, despite everything, along the way she learned a great deal about love’ Observer
‘She was original, opinionated and wayward … She knew how to use her life as copy, and her self-commentary had a gallantry to it’ Guardian
‘Mordant and talon-sharp … With In Gratitude, she has written a different kind of cancer memoir, and an almost entirely platitude-free one, simply by writing a typically sui-generis Jenny Diski book’ New York Times
‘One of the most inventive, original and disturbing writers of her generation’ Daily Telegraph
‘She is prickly, difficult, irascible, contrary, detached … It is a troubled, complex relationship between two maddening, brilliant women and the central conundrum of Diski’s life, which, as we leave her, sipping liquid morphine, very near to the end, she is still trying to figure out’ The Times
‘Jenny Diski was as fearless as she was frank. No subject was off limits … Unsentimental and unapologetic’ Daily Express
‘Really, what is different and moving about In Gratitude is not Diski’s refusal of cancer’s clichés so much as the way that she chews on them, wincing, until she finds the unknown in “the too well known.” … In writing about herself, even in writing about her own death, she was also writing about writing’ New Yorker
‘The manner of Ms Diski’s style and expression alerts the reader immediately to the extraordinary person – and writer behind them. Her bravery shines through, but also the unsparing attitude to herself and others … Only the most stony-hearted of readers could fail to admire her’ Washington Times
‘Few authors were better at combining the personal and political (or Twitter) than Jenny Diski. She is sorely missed, but at least she finished In Gratitude’ Juliet Jacques, Guardian