While the writing was as brilliant as ever, I found myself less captured and transported by the book than Paris to the moon. In that sense a little disappointed. The essay on his friend Kirk Varnedoe and the Mighty Metrozoids was beautiful and true.

Reading this book and LOVING it! He alternately writes about living in New York in a way that makes me passionately think YES, that's EXACTLY how I feel! and make me laugh aloud, which I rarely do when reading. (that move can get you some odd looks on the subway by the way - beware)

There are few writers that can make me feel full of light when I'm reading them. Gopnik is one of them.

Not loving this enough to finish now.

A good book from one of the New Yorker's best essayist. And, man, can this guy talk with remarkable wit and intelligence about anything in the world!

Here's my interview with Gopnik from the October 2006 issue of BookPage:

http://www.bookpage.com/0610bp/adam_g...

Tedious at times (brilliantly tedious, but tedious nonetheless), but the final two essays are just stunning. Adam Gopnik never alows his overt intellectualism trip up his innate honesty.

I purchased this book while in NYC and loved every minute newly knowing sights and landmarks. He is a good essayist/memorist.

I wanted to like this more, and I wanted to be more amused. But Gopnik managed, in places, to make New York really boring. A few chapters saved it for me, including the one featuring Mr. Ravioli, his daughter's imaginary friend who is always too busy to play with her.

Gopnik's writing is always good, but this collection had fewer gems than I expected.

While Adam Gopnik was penning this latest collection of essays and observations about New York post 9/11, I was reading his first book “Paris to the Moon” – which recounted his Gallic sojourn pre-9/11. Now almost seven years later, I’m confess to being a bit disappointed – over-all – when comparing his latest offering to that sense of wonder when reading him for the first time. As a whole, “Through the Children’s Gate” was disjointed. Despite several top-notch essays, one too many of those included in this volume don’t have much to do with either being a father, his children, or both – which naturally left me befuddled. (Why include them? Leave them for publication in The New Yorker – his literary home and haunt – if you ask me.) Yet many of the essays are worth the price of admission as they focus on the vagaries of being a father to two young children growing up in the Big Apple – notably the “Thanksgiving” quartet, “Bumping into Mr. Ravioli”, and “Death of the Fish.” Of which several of these put a wry smile on my face with his Lord of the Rings and “Vertigo” allusions. Clever man, that Adam Gopnik.

Libro del 2006 che mette la sensibilità di Gopnik al servizio di una lettura della vita a New York post 9.11 centrata soprattutto sul punto di vista dei bambini. C'è tanta vita, in queste pagine e ci sono tante storie che forse in parte contraddicono l'amarezza che l'autore esprime nella pagine finali per la progressiva "morte" della città. Letto oggi, un senso storico si aggiunge al piacere di seguire Gopnik nelle sue osservazioni sempre personali e ironiche.

Barbara Sellers rec