through the woods with your smartest, funniest, most observant friend-in the excellent company of at least two dogs. Afterward? Wine by the fire. And all the cheese.

-Jill Christman, author of If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays

What I admire about Slow Learner by Jan Shoemaker is the entire package: her range, her seemingly effortless eye for literary effects, and her complete control of tone. By range I mean she can go from meringue to mystery in a phrase and by literary effects I mean she successfully pulls off more surprises in a paragraph than most writers do in an entire essay. As for tone, she moves assuredly from ridicule to reverence and back, hitting all the emotions in between in every single essay. I laughed all the way through this heartbreaking book. In her view we live in a miracle and are committing a tragedy. No one has said that with more grace, honesty, and generosity of spirit than Jan Shoemaker.

-Steven Harvey, author of The Beloved Republic

If I can't have Jan Shoemaker living next door, and I have accepted that cruel fact, at least I can read every word of Slow Learner from cover to cover and then read it again. The only other insurmountable problem is that I wish I had written it.

-Abigail Thomas, author of What Comes Next and How to Like It