UK reviews:
'Lauren Elkin has discovered that the notes app on her iPhone 5c is the perfect inbuilt Oulipian constraint, and she has made a slim, original book from that premise, chipping up Paris into modular bits glimpsed from the window of the 91 and 92 bus.' – Paul Grimstad, Times Literary Supplement
‘This elegiac, redemptive meditation on collective and private grief reminds us to look up from our screens and notice the unremarkable threads that bind a community.' — Madeleine Feeny, Spectator
‘A sketchbook record of the patterns that shape our experience and how they are disrupted. In order to keep living, Elkin proposes, we assimilate those disruptions into our experience by weaving them into the stories we tell ourselves. This unexpectedly moving book shows how we remake the everyday, every day. ‘ – Ben Eastham, ArtReview
‘Like Ernaux, [Elkin] draws her reader into that strange state of being at once present and absent, observing and taking notes on what unfolds. She allows herself into the text with more definitiveness than Ernaux though, and this is significant as part of her intent to ‘normalise the female body in all its manifold physicalities’… This is writing that is both critical and practical at its heart: writing that prizes making attempts beyond the resolution (or lack of) that the attempt might beget.’ — Edwina Attlee, Architectural Review
‘Maybe it’s Paris, or the descriptions of other people’s clothing, or just the occasional, bittersweet ennui, but I couldn’t help but see some of director Éric Rohmer’s weary travellers in the text.’ — Claire Marie Healy, AnOther magazine
‘Like sitting between Perec and Anne Garreta on a cross-town bus (this is the highest of compliments).’ — Jonny Diamond, on Twitter
‘An artful excursion in seeing and apprehending everyday lives. If you’re not in Paris just pretend you are, then read this on a bus for peak resonance.’ – Simon Armstrong, Tate Modern, on Instagram
'The simple premise belies the sensitivity of these notes. Through her quotidian journeys by bus, Elkin finds ways to see the world afresh...a book about the profound experience of living among strangers, and finding irritation, curiosity, and beauty, in an everyday experience, all at once.' – Katie da Cunha Lewin, Brixton Review of Books
‘These notes amount to a reflection of public transit’s almost unique capacity to force our interior lives to bump up against the exterior reality of the city… Observing the infra-ordinary demands a generosity, at least of noticing, towards the other — a recognition of their existence not only in your own day, but on the bus, in the city and in the world.’ – Claire Thomson, Review 31
‘The use of her mobile phone gives these entries a particularly honest tone as Elkin captures the fleeting considerations that can become lost in the lengthy deliberation of most writing practices… Throughout the book, Elkin gives an opportunity to delve into the understanding of “that woman on the bus” by delivering an empathic and philosophical account.’ – Stephanie Cottle, Big Issue North
'...intimate and inclusive, as Elkin invites us into her tiny space on public transport and the vast space of her thoughts.' – Translating Women
'This admirable little book will strike a chord with almost everyone who ever took a journey and found their mind wandering into thoughts about the people around them.' – Paul Burke, NB Magazine
'...a thrilling tribute to the importance of everyday living, and a window into life’s big and small tragedies, from terrorism to the loss of a wanted pregnancy.' – Summer Brennan, Signal Boost
US reviews:
'What Ernaux and Elkin embrace is the collectiveness of urban life, its inherent and unavoidable communion' – Grace Linden, Chicago Review of Books
'Elkin allows her mind to wander, thus taking us on an unprecedented journey on which we encounter thoughts, places, & people, as we do her ruminations, knee-jerk reactions, under-the-breath mutterings, & personal contemplations.' – Anandi Mishra, Los Angeles Review of Books
Other reviews:
'Elkin uncovers the ordinary marvel of the city and its inhabitants as she watches them go by from her bus seat.' – Aida Marrella, TreSequenze
Further praise for Lauren Elkin and Flâneuse: Women Walk the City (2017)
‘An uplifting, gender-bending critique of how women negotiate public space.’— Deborah Levy, Guardian, Book of the Year
‘A rich, intelligent and lively meander through cultural history, biography, literary criticism, urban topography and memoir.’ — Lucy Scholes, Observer
‘Flâneuse is not simply a reclaiming of space, but also of a suppressed intellectual and cultural history.’ — Sandeep Parmar, Financial Times
‘The thoughtful urban stroller Lauren Elkin is a self-appointed heir to Woolf's “street haunter”.’— Gaby Wood, Daily Telegraph
‘An intense meditation on what it means to be a woman and walk out in the world.’ —Erica Wagner, New Statesman
Stephanie Cottle, Big Issue North
UK reviews:
Bouge ton cul! Paris passing through a writer’s thumbs Paul Grimstad, Times Literary Supplement, October 2021
On the buses Claire Thomson, Review 31, January 2022
No. 91/92: Notes on a Parisian commute by Lauren Elkin Translating Women, 23 September 2021
Signal Boost: September Reads Summer Brennan, 6 September 2021
US reviews:
Intimacy with Strangers in “No. 91/92” and “Exteriors” Grace Linden, Chicago Review of Books, 21 September 2021
Paris from the Window Seat: On Lauren Elkin’s “No. 91/92: A Diary of a Year on the Bus” Anandi Mishra, Los Angeles Review of Books, 1 October 2021
Other reviews:
Writing the city: bus rides with Lauren Elkin Aida Marrella, TreSequenze, 12 January 2021