Book Reviews
Yet the core of Heroic Measures is the patient, specific laying forth of the lives of this childless septuagenarian couple, these City College graduates with their little dog, their fluorescent light over the kitchen sink, their regular ethnic dinner with friends, their love for Chekhov and, yes, their Viagra-aided sex life. These quotidian but palpably truthful details add up to a story that doesn’t seem at all unconvincing. If that seems like faint praise, well, this isn’t a novel that goes for a big plot payoff (despite Pamir’s antics) or courts raves with ambitious prose. With this 48-hour portrait of a marriage in which troubles flare only briefly, Ciment seems to be aiming for something lighter and yet more real.
Caitlin Macy - New York Times
Read Jill Ciment’s Heroic Measures for its painterly depictions of a rattled city, its deliciously biting satire of media and real estate madness, its tender knowledge of the creaturely ties that bind.
O Magazine
Ciment's spare and surprisingly gripping novel details one long weekend in the life of Ruth and Alex Cohen, an elderly New York couple hoping to sell their East Village apartment of 45 years.... Ciment plays the veterinary, real estate and domestic details like elements of a thriller plot, while the couple's love of their dog provides heartrending texture.
Publishers Weekly
Three days of personal and public disasters form the scene of this latest from Ciment (The Tattoo Artist).... The story is touching, with more than a little wry humor aimed at the easily agitated media and the vagaries of real estate in New York. By the end of the first chapter, the reader feels at home with Ruth, Alex, and their little dog.
Amy Ford - Library Journal
Three disparate narrative elements—a possible terrorist attack, the real-estate market in New York City, a sick dachshund-somehow cohere into a blackly comic yet tenderly touching novel..... Could have been loopy in less deft hands, but Ciment keeps things lively and edgy throughout.
Kirkus Reviews