Hamlet's Dresser (Smith) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
That words have a healing power may be a cliche for some, but in this intimate, often wryly funny memoir, their ability to transform lives is demonstrable.
Toronto Globe and Mail


Smith depicts characters so vividly and orchestrates their interactions so poignantly that the memoir would work if Shakespeare were absent. His presence makes the book more moving still.
Chicago Tribune


Hamlet's Dresser is touching, mesmerizing, intelligent, poetic, fascinating, and beautiful—you will love it.
Book-of-the-Month Club


In this intimate, inspiring account, Smith concludes that words and ideas possess the ability to heal and transform a life no matter how dire and painful the circumstances, using his own difficult childhood and productive adulthood as proof.... Veteran memoir readers will find this book absorbing, refreshing and touching.
Publishers Weekly


Smith's memoir tenderly breaks your heart into pieces and, with the sagacious insight...weaves it into a resplendent crown of joy.... Smith is the teacher we all should have had to introduce us to Shakespeare. Fortunately, he has given us this bejeweled book. —Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX
Library Journal


Disjointed memoir of a troubled family.... Smith's own passion for the Bard of Avon might have been more fully explained, not because a love of Shakespeare is so hard to understand, but because it is the memoir's primary conceit.... Alternately touching and informative, but it fails to cohere.
Kirkus Reviews