In her thoughtful and moving memoir Smile, Ruhl reminds us that a smile is not just a smile but a vital form of communication, of bonding, of what makes us human.

... to run into an illness memoir that one would call 'delightful' would seem to be a rare occurrence. Yet I just read... Smile.

Some sections of this slim book may feel padded (unless you’re riveted by the subject of gluten), and Ruhl’s detective work into her family medical history is speculative enough to feel tangential.

Ruhl makes many interesting observations on the wider significance of smiles, from strangers in the street demanding that women should smile, to the frozen statue of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale. But she wears her academic hat lightly, skipping easily from Shakespeare back to the chaos of her family life, in which theatre rewrites are cut short because all three children are vomiting. This is a book about far more than smiles: some of the most touching sections look back at Ruhl’s childhood, and the experiences that propelled her into theatre. The tale of a health condition is, more interestingly, the tale of the person it afflicts.

... sharply observed.

If you love Sarah Ruhl’s plays as I do...you will be happy to spend time listening to the playwright speaking in her own voice.

... extraordinary ...[Ruhl] is not self-pitying. Her prose is smart, quipping, pacy. It has the quicksilver mobility her face lacks.

Smile records Ruhl's coming to terms with her new face and the conundrums it presents, it is not limited to 'the story of a face,' as the memoir's subtitle suggests. For much of the book, Ruhl's condition recedes into the background.

...most importantly, and so honestly described, she probes her relationship to her own self: her self-identity, her physicality, and her frustrations and fears living with Bell’s palsy and navigating the world with a face she cannot control. Smile moves through time fluidly, avoiding a simply chronological telling in favor of a more organic searching of emotion, response, ideas, and transformations both physical and emotional.

...intimate.

Though Ruhl spent years avoiding her face in daily life, on the page she stares at it without flinching.

... stunning.

... a wise, intimate, and moving memoir.