Summary and Reviews of The Quality of Life Report by Meghan Daum

Media Reviews

The Boston Globe -Dan Wakefield Daum has written a first-rate novel

The Los Angeles Times - Mark Rozzo … smart, stylish and sometimes downright hilarious.

The New York Times - Karen Karbo The Quality of Life Report is effervescent and companionable and may well be written off as chick lit, though it deserves better. Daum's enormous comic gift -- and her ability to use it in the service of fundamentally serious issues -- is an unexpected delight.

The New Yorker Daum brings a crisp, wisecracking voice to her novel about Lucinda, a life-style correspondent for a morning television show, who, in search of a more interesting life, leaves New York for Prairie City, a fictional Midwestern town.

The Washington Post - Heather Havrilesky In The Quality of Life Report, Daum does her best work with little things -- minor scenes feel the most relevant, empty rooms the most populated. Like her heroine, the less interesting Daum is required to be, the more freedom she has to invent her own palatably melancholy universe out of rough edges and false starts.

Booklist - Meredith Parets Real life turns out to be complicated, and Daum raises big questions in her bracing, funny novel. At once hilarious and wistful, it's such a pleasure to read that after you turn the last page, you want to start over from the beginning and read it again.

Publishers Weekly ...this is not mere chick lit, and men will enjoy it, too. It is a confident first novel, full of wit and deft social criticism....Daum is a rising star.

Library Journal - Nancy Pearl Daum alternates between what seems to want to be social commentary (but what's her point?) and satire (but there's no humor, unless you consider a horse ejaculating on a group of party goers funny).