In the end, The Critic’s Daughter is about the complex love between a parent and a child. It’s not just a book for literary gossips.

Throughout the book, Gilman delightfully weaves the television shows, plays, and movies of her childhood into the story....Gilman also addresses the contradictions and shortcomings of dramatic criticism, suggesting that people should be free to love what they love, in all senses, not just the theatrical.

This revealing and clearly heartfelt memoir — a love letter to her father that doesn’t obscure the difficult and frustrating aspects of their relationship—works precisely because Gilman delivers a detailed portrait of her father, proverbial warts and all.

Nesbit, the super agent whose clients have included Joan Didion... is portrayed so coolly in this book that the pages about her almost shatter as you turn them. It’s a devastating portrait.

The urgency of Gilman’s mission is palpable.

One of the reasons I loved Gilman’s book is that through her father she makes a case for criticism as a worthwhile practice. If you’ve been on the receiving end of a kicking, as everyone in the arts has if they live long enough professionally, it’s easy to forget that critics love the arts as much as their practitioners do. And it’s easy to forget, too, that the best criticism can be as illuminating as any other form of writing.

...a captivating and heartfelt memoir exploring the life of a woman raised by an esteemed literary critic. Through her vivid prose, Gilman takes readers on a journey of self-discovery as she pieces together her father’s complex and sometimes contradictory character while simultaneously facing her own identity crisis.

This memoir read as a rare confluence of things—not so much a "Daddy Dearest" settling of scores, but a sincere attempt to untangle a father-daughter knot of love, hurt, and grief..

Gilman writes with resplendent clarity, meticulous candor, and incandescent love forged in the fire of extraordinarily demanding family dynamics.

In capturing the essence of its challenging subject, The Critic's Daughter is a rare combination of honesty, warmheartedness and exquisite writing. As both fair-minded prosecutor and tenacious defense attorney, Priscilla Gilman scrupulously placed her father’s manifold strengths and obvious flaws on the balance scale and finds that the weight of the evidence tips decidedly in his favor. The audience for this drama can be grateful that she has chosen to share so many scenes of his painful, beautiful life with us. What’s undeniable is that Richard Gilman would be proud of the eloquence and grace with which she has done it..

Poignant.

The narrative is passionate, resonant, and beautifully written, with just a few forgivably maudlin moments.