Suzy's Reviews > Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York

So many reasons to love this book! Roz Chast for one - her humor, her fabulous illustrations and her intimacy with her subject. NYC for another - what's not to love! I got half-way through and deemed worthy of 5 stars.

Looping back now that I've finished . . .

I love Roz Chast and have been enjoying her cartoons for decades. I was reminded by the blurb on the back of the book that she has been drawing in The New Yorker since 1978 - almost 40 years! I've been subscribing that entire time, and more, and one of the first things I do when I get the latest issue is flip through the magazine to find her cartoon. Did I say how much I love Roz Chast?

Going Into Town made me laugh out loud, touched me and left me with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. At the beginning of the book, Roz tells us:

It began as a small booklet I made for my daughter before she left her home in Suburbia to attend college in Manhattan.

That just tickled me to think that your Mom would create a book of illustrations to introduce you to the place you're going to college and to the place that your Mom loves, even though you've grown up in Connecticut.

She ends the book with:

This book is a sort-of guide and also and thank-you letter and a love letter to my hometown and New Yorkers everywhere. You know who you are.

Enough said!