From Publishers Weekly
This latest is writer, critic and NPR contributor Grumbach's (Coming into the End Zone) reflections on her life in Maine. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Organized as a journal divided by months, Grumbach's book begins on September 15, 1991, the day her first memoir, Coming into the End Zone ( LJ 8/91), first appeared in print. The journal covers the next year's further ruminations on old age. Grumbach describes her memories, philosophical musings, reading, work, the people she cares about, and her home in Maine. Though often pessimistic and cynical, she gives a clear, honest picture of her own old age and of how her world has changed for the worse. Her account is instructive for people of all ages. While some of what she says borders on triteness, she says it all so beautifully that one hates to see the book end. Recommended for general collections.- Judy Mimken, Saginaw Valley State Univ., Mich.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
A meandering journal of novelist Grumbach's 74th year that chronicles a final move from Washington, D.C., to the coast of Maine, and that includes brief, often charming, reflections on such diverse topics as mayflies, oxymorons, authors, and death. A follow-up to Coming into the End Zone (1991), which recounted Grumbach's ``intensely despondent'' 71st year, these month-by-month notes seek to examine whether the author's despair has lifted--and whether ``I may come upon some answers to the insistent questions of old age. Or perhaps only succeed in recording the minor thoughts and activities in the life of an aging woman.'' Grumbach begins her journal year with the publication of End Zone and ends it with a ``meditation'' on home, in particular her home in Maine, where she's found ``an interior landscape of serenity, isolation and solitude'' and has become less ``grumpy.'' In between, she offers snippets from La Rochefoucauld, Emerson, Anatole Broyard, and others; descriptions of life in Maine; accounts of her speeches, meetings, and book signings along the Maine/Washington corridor; entertaining anecdotes about the famous and not-so-famous; glimpses of family matters, centered around a daughter's cancer; a musing on love--all nuggets from which novelists craft their tales, but here unconnected and unshaped. Grumbach's work here will inevitably be compared to that of her friend May Sarton: Both are novelists removed to Maine, both are publishing journals on aging. Grumbach, however--probably because she's relatively younger, healthier, and more active than Sarton- -offers an account that's livelier, more wide-ranging, and less self-absorbed, though not much more profound. Written with polish and erudition, here are some budding insights into--but no answers to--the questions of old age. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


From Book News, Inc.
The novelist's reflective journal-jottings, begun as she approached her 75th year; a sequel, really, to her Coming into the End Zone, written at the age of 70. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Extra Innings continues the intense, sometimes funny, sometimes tart, and sometimes very moving account of a closely examined life begun by Doris Grumbach in her widely praised day book Coming into the End Zone. That earlier book chronicles the author's seventy-first year, a time of both struggle against and acceptance of the encroachments of old age. Extra Innings begins two years later, on the publication date of its predecessor, its author exposed to all the exquisitely mingled hopes and fears of sending a book into the world. In this case, though, each review offered Doris Grumbach not only an opinion of her book, but something of a mirror in which she could see herself as the world sees her - or her self-portrait. It proves a somewhat disorienting route to self-knowledge. And so begins another eventful year - crowded with the literary pleasures (and pains) of a life spent reading and writing; the natural beauties and social particulars of life in coastal Maine; the mingled joys and affronts of travel to New York, Washington, Mexico; and, always, the looming presence of illness and mortality, the author's own and her daughter's as well. Extra Innings is, finally, a book about the successful search for home, the end of a journey to the Cove in Sargentville, Maine, where the serene landscape to be viewed from Grumbach's study comes to match the inward landscape of memory and well-earned peace.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

When novelist and literary critic Grumbach published her memoir Coming into the End Zone in 1991, it was cause for celebration--for her and for readers educated and inspired by her year of reflections on turning 70 and the process of what she here calls ``coming into old age.'' Now a few years older, Grumbach, who still lives on the coast of Maine, uses the same month-by-month format to record another year of musings and considerations. Often sublime, sometimes mundane, rarely boring, these reflections will appeal especially to readers who live in the world of books. Grumbach writes with grace and precision about her anxiety while waiting for reviews of End Zone ; about what books she is moved to take from her shelves and reread; about conversations with colleagues, friends and her daughters; about friendship, love and loss. PW gets its mention, decribed as ``the Bible of the book trade (sometimes Job, sometimes Revelations, perhaps Exodus?).'' Norton is reissuing Grumbach's novels, The Ladies and The Magician's Girl , in conjunction with this memoir. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Organized as a journal divided by months, Grumbach's book begins on September 15, 1991, the day her first memoir, Coming into the End Zone ( LJ 8/91), first appeared in print. The journal covers the next year's further ruminations on old age. Grumbach describes her memories, philosophical musings, reading, work, the people she cares about, and her home in Maine. Though often pessimistic and cynical, she gives a clear, honest picture of her own old age and of how her world has changed for the worse. Her account is instructive for people of all ages. While some of what she says borders on triteness, she says it all so beautifully that one hates to see the book end. Recommended for general collections.-- Judy Mimken, Saginaw Valley State Univ., Mich.

Booknews