You'll have flashbacks to your own teenage years while reading this book. Although it's definitely rooted in the American teen experience, the embarrassment of adolescence seems to be pretty much universal (in the English-speaking world at least), so this book is sure to strike a few chords no matter where you're from. Appealing illustrations round out the package. Recommended.

I would not consider "Big City Eyes" a literary master piece but most of the enjoyable light weight stuff we get everyday, like TV shows we watch religiously each week, are none the less essential to our good times. I do believe that the reviews of this book are accurate and provide the potential reader that this is one for a long plane ride. Lily is a character not far from everyone of us that mentally experiences life. We plug in background music to situations, think about the good old times, and wish life were bigger than it really is. I enjoyed this book because of its difference. At first I was annoyed that it was a simple read but I found myself laughing and having a good time reading it. My next book is "White Teeth" a Zadie Smith novel of a more grandious literary style. I look forward to every new style of writing I encounter. Hope you enjoy "Big City Eyes".

This is a truly funny look at the world of a single parent and her small town life as viewed through the eyes of a slightly neurotic newspaper columnist raising her teenage son in rural Long Island. I thorougly enjoyed reading this book. It's witty and fun!

We all come to a novel with our particular bias; mine is as a parent. I loved Ephron's non-stop rating of her son (normal range, not normal range, etc.)and found it both touching and funny. The book has a winsome quality and rather than see it as Lily Davis growth as a woman, I chose to view the novel as her growth as a parent. At the beginning, I would rate her in the normal range but just barely but as the story plows ahead, she makes it to the very normal range. I also enjoyed the fact that Lily Davis does not give in to her own desires but rather to her son's, at least at the end of the book. Aside from everything else, the columns by Lily Davis were quite well written...if only writing like that appeared in every small town weekly. That's another thing...the book is about a Manhattan woman's radical move to a small town and small town life, aside from "Gilmore Girls," was never more charming. Loved it, recommend it.