Nancy Pearl says you should give a book fifty pages; if you are over fifty years of age, then it's fifty, less the number of years over fifty. So I should have given this book only forty pages, and I wish I had, but I'm an inveterate optimist, the writing is sometimes lively, and I am always interested to see what fluff publishers will let you get away with when you have a readership. I (can't believe I) read the whole thing.
The subtitle of Truss' book is "The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door." I read her Eats, Shoots & Leaves, enjoyed the novelty, and picked up Talk to the Hand on the premise that it might be relevant to our interest in civility, civic discourse, etc. I'm sorry to say it's no more than an idiosyncratic, somewhat Brit-oriented, extended rant, cute at times (cloyingly), but utterly devoid of any insights, useful or positive strategies or suggestions. (Well, on the very last page, 201, she does conjecture, with Aristotle, that "if you practise being good in small things..it can lead to the improvement of general morality"...but that's about it). Sample observation: people talking on cell phones in public is not annoying nor rude, she says: it "humanizes" them. I'd tell you what the six reasons were, but they are so pedestrian they don't bear mentioning. "Talk to the hand, coz the face ain't listening," she says, alludes to the Jerry Springer Show.
Read something else.
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