Borges and Me

This is a jewel of a book. Very funny, clever, moving, luminous with love of literature and landscape. Parini's portrait of both Borges and Scotland is exquisite, deeply affectionate, sometimes comically irritable . . . The young Parini's painful writing ambitions are beautifully wrought . . . It's hard to conceive of how an old and frail blind man could have had such psychological force, such unworldly innocence, such redeeming sway over others, but Jay Parini persuades us fabulously in a high-style Borgesian marriage of fiction and history -- IAN McEWAN
For readers who already admire Borges, this memoir will be a delicious treat. For those who have yet to read him, Parini provides the perfect entry point to a writer who altered the way many think of literature * * New York Times * *
Often caper-ish and laugh-out-loud funny . . . this little jewel also brims with affection and gratitude . . . with romantic reveries, stolen lines of poetry, philosophical meanderings and charismatic/egotistical performances showcasing his vast expanse of literary and historic knowledge * * Big Issue * *
A classic comic-philosophical road story, playfully conscious of its own traditions . . . The pressure to capture Scotland in words for the great Jorge Luis Borges forces Jay to think about language in a new way, to "up his game" as a poet, and this artistic journey, occurring alongside their physical journey, becomes the book's emotional backbone . . . A fun, tightly crafted, tender-hearted literary adventure [and] an improbable tale that, like many improbable tales, happens to be true * * Wall Street Journal * *
I don't think I've read any book recently with such outright and unalloyed enjoyment. Jay Parini's wry, ridiculously funny and beautifully written memoir is a literary road trip par excellence. It will open your eyes wide and blow your mind. Devastatingly honest, darkly crazy and deeply touching, this is that rare sort of book: finish it, and you just want to start it all over again -- PHILIP HOARE
Ironic, funny, adorable . . . What a wonderful book! It gave me so much pleasure to read it -- ERICA JONG
Hilarious . . . Parini's book is the literary equivalent of Withnail and I - and it is odds-on that in due course it will become a much-loved film, too * * i * *
A gem of book . . . a wonderful tribute . . . So many memoirs tend towards the sour. Borges and Me [is] sweet and flavoursome and moreish * * Herald Scotland * *
A funny, affecting book . . . an exquisite book * * Independent * *
[A celebration of] the abiding and metamorphic powers of memory, invention, and narrative * * London Review of Books * *