Full of life and spirit and hope, and deeply moving, it communicates a generous love of suffering, flawed humanity. By that token this one has inspired me more than anything I’ve read in a very long time. "When I review a book I underline special passages, stick post-it notes and write comments in the margin. "One cannot but be impressed by Hecht’s breadth of knowledge, mostly expressed with a light touch, and there are many fascinating details."-Oliver James, The Independent Like death, life can inspire, because one's 'ideas matter.'"- Publishers Weekly Gratitude is owed to those who reject suicide, according to Hecht, not only by the community but also by one's 'future self' who may be days, months, or years away. "Suicide as a concept has been praised, defended, and vilified in various contexts throughout history as poet and scholar Hecht (Doubt: A History) painstakingly illustrates in this nuanced and unsettling work, whose title acts as a rallying refrain throughout. Her argument is that it - whatever dark truth that pronoun signifies - almost always gets better."- Newsweek It solves nothing, complicates everything.
"While not insensitive to people who use suicide as a way to end the suffering of terminal illness, Hecht brands suicide an immoral act that robs society - and the self-killer - of a life that is certainly more valuable than what it may seem in that dark moment. On these counts her book merits praise."-John Carey, The Sunday Times She wants to save young lives that seem needlessly lost.
"Hecht’s intentions are patently generous and benign. Even Camus, who found the search for meaning as absurd as pushing the same boulder up a cliff every day, urged his readers to ‘imagine Sisyphus happy,’ and to live."- New Yorker "The author of the best-selling Doubt offers a history of suicide and of arguments against it. Her final plea to the suicidal gives the book its title: she urges them to simply 'stay.'"-Thomas Flynn, The Daily Beast "A history not only of suicide, but how we think about suicide. Hecht proposes her own argument against suicide in the secular, modern world, presenting a humanist call for life. She finds common threads: sympathy for life’s difficulty, yet a plea to stay, for the sake of one’s community and even for one’s future self."-Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe "Hecht is an intellectual historian and a poet, and her writing reflects both disciplines: The book is rigorous and deeply rewarding, both accessible and challenging. "Eloquent and affecting."-David Brooks, New York Times
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