the worst book review ever

Books Update from NYTimes.com
Sunday, July 16, 2006

'Friendship: An Expose,' by Joseph Epstein
Review by JENNIFER SENIOR

Friends are not bound to us by law or blood. We don't leave them huge sums in our wills. Yet we expect loyalty and lasting affection from them, and they from us. How, Joseph Epstein wants to know, are friendships supposed to withstand all this stuff? It's a good question, and a great one for Epstein, who's proved himself a formidable taxonomist of human instincts and institutions, breaking them down as a biologist does a kingdom. Over the course of his long and unnervingly prolific career, he has explored such topics as divorce, morality, ambition (in a book by the same name) and envy (ditto).

But friendship is an awkward subject for him. Repeatedly - oppressively, almost - Epstein says that he doesn't go in for the therapeutic, that he does not find sharing "manly." Writing a book about friendship under these circumstances is a bit like reviewing a restaurant as a vegetarian.