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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Apr 2004, 240 pages
Paperback:
Apr 2006, 240 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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From the book jacket: Many punctuation guides already exist explaining
the principles of the apostrophe; the comma; the semi-colon. These books do
their job but somehow punctuation abuse does not diminish. Why? Because people
who can't punctuate don't read those books! Of course they don't! They laugh at
books like those! Eats, Shoots and Leaves adopts a more militant approach
and attempts to recruit an army of punctuation vigilantes: send letters back
with the punctuation corrected. Do not accept sloppy emails. Climb ladders at
dead of night with a pot of paint to remove the redundant apostrophe in "Video's
sold here".....
Comment: Every now and then a book comes along, seemingly from out of the
blue, and catches the public's interest. For example, last year Natural
Cures 'They' Don't Want You To Know About
and
Marley and Me came from nowhere to make huge sales. The year
before, one of the breakout surprises was Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss,
which gained serious momentum in Britain following its publication in November
2003 with a 15,000 print run (by Christmas 2003 500,000 copies had been sold)
and hit the USA market with a bang in early 2004.
As Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes (and a former English teacher) so
delightfully puts it, "If Lynne Truss were Roman Catholic I'd nominate her for
sainthood. As it is, thousands of English teachers from Maine to Maui will be
calling down blessings on her merry, learned head for her book, Eats, Shoots
& Leaves. It's a book about punctuation, the poor stepchild of mean old
grammar. Punctuation, if you don't mind! The book is so spirited, so scholarly,
so seductive, English teachers will sweep aside all other topics to get to, you
guessed it, punctuation. Parents and children gather by the fire on chilly
evenings to read passages on the history of the semi-colon and the much-maligned
dash. Make way for the new Cinderella of the English language, Punctuation
Herself!
This review
first ran in the April 20, 2006
issue of BookBrowse Recommends.
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