“Agnostic is a beautiful, inquisitive, energetic 200-page tribute to uncertainty. […] You might give yourself windburn turning these pages. […] I finished reading…then I read the whole thing over again immediately. I didn’t want to stop feeling that joyful crush of wonder, of not knowing.” Clearly, Paul Constant, writing for The Seattle Review of Books, is enamoured of Lesley Hazleton’s book. It’s one “only Hazleton could write,” he adds, she being, as Kirkus Reviews mentions, “Jewish by blood, and convent-educated by nuns”.
Critics loved this book: “Here, with clever elucidation, are artful essays that celebrate the wonder of the unknown” [Kirkus Reviews]; “I love Lesley Hazleton’s sentences. …they reflect the extremely balanced-seeming mind that creates them. […] [H]er argument for the extension of the mind is truly awe-inspiring stuff” [Rich Smith, for thestranger.com]; “…Agnostic is meant to be ‘an ongoing adventure of the mind,’ and she accomplishes this goal admirably” [Kim Kovacs, Book Browse].
Publishers Weekly sums it up thusly: “To be agnostic is…for Hazleton…to have enough backbone to stand firm in the liminality of uncertainty. She wants her readers to give agnosticism a fair shake, and many will be convinced by her appealing voice and accessible prose.”
Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto
By Lesley Hazleton
Riverhead Books, 2016
