The Cassandra Chronicles: Press reviews

‘Ariel Leve is the love child of David Sedaris and Fran Leibowitz. An original and funny voice. She is painfully self-aware and has a self-deprecating look at life. The flip side of Sex and The City. Insightful and sharp – this is a very funny book written by a woman who knows how to laugh at herself and her insecurities.’

Joan Rivers

‘Ariel Leve is brilliant and funny and the only other person I know without an oven. Buy this book and keep it close.’

Bill Nighy

‘Why would anyone buy this book?’

Harvey A. Leve, Ariel’s father

‘It might seem strange that I approve of Ariel’s doom-mongering, but actually I find her hilarious and addictive honesty comes closer to the secret of optimism than she would probably care to admit! Immensely enjoyable.’

Laurence Shorter, author of The Optimist

‘Let me cut to the chase (a phrase Ariel Leve hates, by the way): this is a funny, smart, delightfully cranky book about everything from Facebook to dating to Angelina Jolie’s dinner conversation. If Fran Leibowitz didn’t have her famed case of writer’s block, The Cassandra Chronicles is the kind of book she might publish.’

A.J.Jacobs

‘Ariel Leve’s dry and bitter wit highlights the funny side in our everyday negative feelings… The Cassandra Chronicles is a collection of her hilarious self pitying and award-winning columns from the Sunday Times.’

Evening Herald

‘Welcome to the wonderfully dark and witty world of Ariel Leve. This collection of her much-loved Cassandra columns is packed full of laugh-out-loud one-liners and thoughtful observations on everyday life… forthright, funny and extremely honest.’

List

‘Never intended to be a feel-good book, but in a perverse way it proves itself a great mood-shifter and lifter…Darkly humorous…sparkling with tiny appliquéd gems of self deprecating cynicism.’

Good Housekeeping

‘Winner of this year’s British Press Awards for Feature Writer of the Year. Leve’s weekly column has 100,000 regular visitors … Now her columns are collected in book form for the first time.’

Bookseller

‘Warm your cockles at the fire of Ariel Leve’s drily lugubrious The Cassandra Chronicles, which comes with the tagline ‘It could be worse — you could be me.’‘

Spectator

‘In these bulletins from the front of deepest, darkest curmudgeonliness, Ariel Leve proves herself to be the literary love child of Larry David and Dorothy Parker. This book is like the perfect dinner companion: observant, irreverent and funny as hell.’

Dani Shapiro, author of Slow Motion

‘Ariel Leve’s columns are (as is she) witty, sharply observant, all over the unstated absurdities beneath most of our habitual attitudes and social gestures, delightfully female, sexy, a little cracked, and just past that crooked grin, filled with humanity and longing. This book justly introduces her wonderful commentaries to a larger audience and anyone reading it will have been exposed to the freshest and one of the best columnists working today.’

Vince Passaro, author of Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel

‘Leve offers a refreshingly dark and wry outlook on life that is masterfully told through her sharp and acerbic wit.’

She Magazine

‘Leve has a tremendous eye for the trivial but deeply important stuff of life... sharp, witty and ruthlessly observed’

Jewish Chronicle

‘Ariel Leve’s The Cassandra Chronicles is perfect for le crunch – who needs to be upbeat when negativity is this entertaining?’

Instyle Magazine

She could be the love child of Fran Lebowitz and Woody Allen. She possesses that same kind of sad-sack New York Jewish humour that is both perceptive and caustic. If you enjoy laughing at your foibles and the foibles of your friends, then every line of this very clever, if painful, book will be chuckled and cried over.’

Sydney Morning Herald

Original, insightful and sharp … a very funny book written by a woman who knows how to laugh at herself and her insecurities.’

The Sunday Canberra Times