... at once a lively tale of growing up lower-middle-class in Brooklyn; a gossipy account of scrambling up the comedy ladder from tabloid gag writer to Oscar winner; an aggrieved attack on Mia Farrow; and a look in the rear-view mirror at his long career with the aim of assessing its worth. (His verdict: not much.) If you’re 100% convinced that he molested his daughter Dylan, this book is not for you. But for those of us who admire that career and can still muster an interest in it, this memoir is for the most part a pleasure to read and entertaining company.

Volunteering to review [Apropos of Nothing], in our moral climate, is akin to volunteering for the 2021 Olympic javelin-catching team. I told my wife and daughter my plan, and they stared at me as if I’d announced my intention to find the nearest functioning salad bar and lick the sneeze guard.

Allen is surprisingly forthright on the various accusations against him.

There are essentially two books in one in this (for what it’s worth) highly consumable memoir by Woody Allen, and it’s not always an easy join between the two. The first and frothier is an overview of his life and loves and influences and achievements, one conveyed in fluent Woody Allenese, all set-ups and payoffs and sprinkles of self-deprecation and existential dread...The second is his vigorous defence against the charges of sexual abuse that have come to cloud his career again after first being raised in 1992.

It is 'really not so,' Woody Allen remarks defensively, halfway through his new memoir...that 'I gravitated toward young girls'.

Titled Apropos of Nothing, the memoir is actually three books: One is a hilarious account of his Brooklyn upbringing; the second is a superbly revealing analysis of triumphs and flaws in his filmmaking; and the third is a baffling and unhinged report of his personal encounters, which reads like a bad parody of a Dostoevsky novel, with subtitles by Freud.

As if coping with the ravages of a global pandemic hasn’t made life unpleasant enough, now we’ve all got to talk about Woody Allen. Again.

With grammar and punctuation not 100% proofed, the reader would guess that the transfer from Hachette to Arcade/Skyhorse might have made Skyhorse jump to release the book before it was ready.

...Allen’s autobiography is a mixed bag. If he can write (obviously, he can), and if he is, at points, surprisingly honest (eye-poppingly so, on occasion), then he can also be a bore and a self-deceiver. Of course, if you’re one of those who, disgusted by what you regard as his moral failings, has vowed never to watch Annie Hall or Manhattan again, then you’re unlikely to want to embark on Apropos of Nothing in the first place – and fair enough, that’s up to you. But I’m not in that camp. Nor can I comment on Allen’s alleged abuse of his adoptive daughter, Dylan, a crime of which he was first accused in 1992 (two police investigations into this have come to nothing). What I will say, however, is that I regard it as both disgraceful and alarming that Hachette, his original publisher, gutlessly dropped his book following a walkout by some of its staff – and that though I was sometimes repulsed by it myself, I was also fascinated, even entertained. So, shoot me. Again, that’s your choice.

There’s a witty sentiment on nearly every page of this book, but Allen’s chilly approach to his own story feels alternately humble and crabby.

Many readers will be grateful that Woody Allen’s memoir has arrived in a time of face masks and latex gloves. So toxic is the volume that some may be tempted to rinse it in chloroxylenol before placing on a lectern 2m distant.

There may be no American filmmaker alive other than Terrence Malick who has volunteered less insight into his art — his writing process, his taste in actors, his creative struggles, when he thinks he succeeded or failed, why he made the choices he made, what, if anything — please, anything! — he felt ambivalent about.