"Norris has a remarkable gift for conveying and transmitting passion."
Times Literary Supplement - Imogen Russell Williams
"Norris is a jaunty companion, splendidly bookish, full of excellent little facts."
Guardian - Charlotte Higgins
"Greek to Me bursts with a cheerful lust for all things Hellenic: the language, ancient and modern; the mythology; the wine; the sunshine; the sea; and, occasionally, the men."
Washington Independent Review of Books - Susan Storer Clark
"[Mary] Norris… whose first book chronicled her passion for punctuation, here recounts, with the same contagious wit and enthusiasm, her obsession with Greece—its language, history and culture."
"Norris is an uncommonly engaging, witty enthusiast with a nose for delicious details."
"What a fantastic book! Not only is Greek to Me educational, entertaining, and gorgeously written, it shows us how intellectual curiosity coupled with a dash of bravery can pave the way for a more meaningful life."
Mary Norris's Greek to Me is one of the most satisfying accounts of a great passion that I have ever read. It traces a decades-long obsession with Greece: its language (both modern and ancient), literature, mythologies, people, places, food and monuments—all with an absorption that never falters and never squanders the reader's attention…Norris's irreverent reverence for the history of the Greek language is not only admirable, it is moving. When she writes, "Ancient Greek is like the Bible: records of the past that preserve the things that humans most need to know," you feel yourself in the presence of a traveler whose authority emanates from lived experience.
The New York Times Book Review - Vivian Gornick
★ 12/03/2018New Yorker copy editor Norris (Between You and Me ), known for her Comma Queen videos on grammar and style, once again takes readers on an entertaining, erudite, and altogether delightful journey fueled by the love of language. Here, she chronicles her passion for all things Greek, both classical and modern. Denied a chance to study Latin in fifth grade, Morris took that latent enthusiasm for the ancients and applied it to Greek as an adult, even convincing her New Yorker supervisors to subsidize her classical Greek classes as an aid to her copyediting duties. In addition to recounting her scholastic adventures, the book recounts her successive travels through Greece, which she explored with ever-increasing linguistic skill. Morris’s lively travel log skillfully meshes autobiographical anecdotes, self-reflection, and explorations of mythology—on her first trip, she gets up early during an overnight ferry ride, hoping “to catch Homer’s famed rhododáctylos , the rosy fingers of dawn.” At the center of it all is her passion for Greek, a language often “held to be impenetrable,” yet which gives her “an erotic thrill, as if every verb and noun had some visceral connection to what it stands for.” For those who have long followed the Comma Queen, her latest outing will not disappoint. (Apr.)
"Mary Norris’s love for all things Greek is palpable and infectious. She is a charming, insightful guide through both ancient and modern glories, and I expect her lush descriptions of the Greek countryside to provoke a tourism stampede."
"As a reader, I would follow the writer Mary Norris wherever she goes, and I found myself enthralled by this wondrous journey through Greek myths and language and art. Norris brings everything into the glimmering light—most of all the beauty of words."
"One of the most satisfying accounts of a great passion that I have ever read."
"A rapturous memoir of falling in love with language…At their best, these pages leave you feeling salt-kissed and freshly tanned, languorous with ouzo."
"Charming…Aiming at times for slapstick, Ms. Norris keeps uncovering veins of tragedy."
Wall Street Journal - A. E. Stallings
"Mary Norris, our master grammarian, proves that knowing the rules sets you free. Here she writes about Greek language, culture, and mythology with an untrammeled grace that’s a delight to read and, almost incidentally, a demonstration of high-level literary skill. Greek to Me is a book to dive into—a page-turning and wonderful achievement."
"Norris’ vibrant prose flies off the page, and the breadth of her material set my head spinning at times. Still, she brings it all together with insight and wisdom."
Minneapolis Star Tribune - Elfrieda Abbe
"Poignant, antic, hilarious, Mary Norris is the definition of wearing your learning lightly, and after a lifetime of Greek immersion, pouring beer libations, and skinny-dipping in the waters of Aphrodite, her lessons slip down sweetly. This book is true ambrosia."
"I fell in love with Mary Norris’s first book, and am now even more in love with this charming, ribald, highly informed, and always funny excursion through the language, culture, and oddities of Greece and the Greek language. An adventure tale for intellectuals—and also for the rest of us."
2018-12-30
The New Yorker 's acclaimed "Comma Queen" explores her captivation with all things Greek.
Norris (Between You & Me , 2015), whose first book recounted her career in the New Yorker 's copy department, offers an exuberant memoir of her transformation from a sheltered schoolgirl in Ohio to a passionate Hellenophile. Thwarted by her father from learning Latin—"Was Dad against education for women? Yes"—the author revived her fascination for dead languages after seeing Time Bandits , part of which was set in ancient Greece. Since the New Yorker generously paid tuition for classes that had some bearing on an employee's work—as a copy editor, knowing Greek could be helpful—Norris enrolled in modern Greek and ancient Greek courses at NYU, Barnard, and Columbia. The Greek alphabet enthralled her. It was adapted radically, she discovered, from the Phoenician alphabet into "a tool for the preservation of memory, for recording history and making art." Delving into etymology, Norris makes a case for the enduring vitality of Greek by revealing its widespread roots in English. Ancient Greek, she asserts, "is far from dead." As she painstakingly immersed herself in learning the language, the author took her first trip to Greece, where she "shot around the Aegean like a pinball," making brief stops in Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, Samos, Chios, and Lesbos. As a solo traveler, she found herself the object of much male attention. "Dining alone in restaurants," she reports, "I was a tourist attraction unto myself." That trip incited her desire to return—she recounts subsequent journeys in lyrical detail—as well as to tackle Greek classics: "I wished there were some way I could be Greek or at least pass as Greek, just by saturating myself in Greekness." She devoured books by Lawrence Durrell and, especially, Patrick Leigh Fermor, two renowned philhellenes, and she steeped herself in heroes, myths, and, gleefully, goddesses. Mythology, she writes, gave her myriad models for women's roles beyond "virgin, bride, and mother," choices that seemed so constricting to her as she grew up.
A delightful celebration of a consuming passion.
