SOURCE: Rubin, Merle. “Conversations with a Good, Smart Friend.” Christian Science Monitor 91, no. 160 (15 July 1999): 21.

In the following review, Rubin suggests that reading the essays collected in Narcissus Leaves the Pool is like having a conversation with a good friend, due to their “directness, ease, sincerity, and affability.”

It might be said that the primary purpose of a diary is to allow us to talk to ourselves, though many a would-be Pepys has imagined his or her pages admiringly perused by readers of a future age. The main purpose of a letter is to communicate with a specific recipient, though many of us have doubtless found ourselves in the position of writing long missives that are probably of more interest to ourselves than to the intended readers. In some ways, the essay occupies a kind of middle ground, for the most natural-sounding essayists are those who seem simultaneously to...