Saul Bellow’s Heart is a fascinating personal document written with much sympathy, yet an admirable candor, by Bellow's eldest son Gregory, a psychotherapist. It is a portrait of the artist at close quarters, and at a little distance; a confirmation of the deep autobiographical roots of Bellow's fiction; and a revelation of what it means to be the child, in ... Read morethis case one of three sons, of the most lavishly acclaimed American writer of the second half of the 20th century
Joyce Carol Oates
A very personal, affectionate account of a giant of modern literature
Sunday Herald
Its family history can illuminate novels
Evening Standard
[A] restrained and moving memoir
David Baddiel, The Times
What distinguishes this ... is the ability to express both admiration and disapproval without becoming fully possessed by either ... The result, free from illusions and full of sweet writing, does greater justice to what his father left behind than any number of eulogies from his better-known literary sons
New Statesman
Saul Bellow was an incandescent being, and also incandescently difficult. Greg Bellow has written a wrenchingly candid account of being his son - a real son, not a literary son: there is no self-invention here, there is only self-discovery. I was deeply moved by Greg Bellow's memoir of his passage from pain to acceptance. Amid the brutalities of love he has found its blessing
Leon Wieseltier
Thoughtful and considered and fuelled by Greg Bellow’s hurt as much as his memories opens with a telling anecdote. It is discreetly operatic, an overture that helps makes sense of all that is to follow ... Perceptive, honest ... Impressively intelligent ... It is true to Bellow the writer and the man
Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
His memoir contains some interesting nuggets
Sunday Times
Bellow’s characterisation of his father’s background is one of the most enjoyable strands of the book
Guardian
A better book than might have been expected. The eldest son of the Nobel Prize-winning Canadian-born US novelist, a retired psychiatrist, reveals some of the pride and all of the hurt that went with belonging to the first of his self-absorbed father’s several families
Eileen Battersby, Irish Times Non-fiction Books of the Year
Show Less