Yossarian Slept Here

An affectionate, no-punches-pulled, often hilarious memoir

Herald

Both charming and combative

New York Times

As soon as I read the opening I was determined and eager to consume everything that followed, up to and including the Pot Roast

Christopher Hitchens, author of Hitch-22

Heller's domestic side is evoked with painful detail by his daughter, Erica, in her well written, occasionally harrowing memoir, Yossarian Slept Here

Sunday Times

A likeable memoir...Yossarian Slept Here gives us the gruff, arrogant big shot; the smug cocky fellow who sometimes showed up to friend's cocktail parties for the sheer fun of insulting them

Financial Times

Erica Heller...seems to have weathered her girlhood better than most daughters of celebrated literary lions... Heller's book shows a robust acceptance of her father's overbearing personality and Don Draperesque approach to marriage and fatherhood... The New York of the period leaps off the page

Independent

With wit punctuating lambent nostalgia, Erica Heller brings her father to life in an animated, absorbing fashion, documenting his quirky habits, celebrity, and "invisible, unfathomable inner cycle," but also her parents' divorce and Heller's suffering with Guillain-Barre syndrome. The total effect is akin to leafing through a bulging family scrapbook where one finds a few blurry images among many snapshots in sharp focus. Erica Heller has inherited her father's finely tuned flair with words

Publishers Weekly

Intimate, yet well-researched..comedic and poignant, her many-faceted memoir is rendered in high-definition as Heller recounts meals, travels, parties, arguments, lies, and the serious illnesses that afflicted her and her parents. Writing with wit, compassion, aplomb, and no little wonder at what her father wrought and her mother endured and how this legacy shaped her, Heller presents an involving and invaluable work of personal and cultural history.

Booklist

Heller's family memoir brims with warm reflections right from the opening chapters... An affectionate family scrapbook crafted with a bittersweet blend of humor and pathos

Kirkus Reviews