“Blanch’s brilliance lies in her honesty about the subjectivity of her work. For her, travel is neither an act of discovery nor an explication….but the endless attempt to bridge that vast land of otherness with the worlds we’ve created in our own minds….If Blanch’s Journey isn’t a traditional travelogue, it’s not because she can’t write about the Russia in front of her. It’s because that Russia…can never be the only one she sees.” —Tara Isabella Burton, The Paris Review
“She was incapable of writing boringly or badly…[Journey is an] incomparably eccentric exercise in autobiography.” —Philip Ziegler, The Spectator
“Everything about [Blanch] was abundant…She reminded you irresistibly of a gilded cupid, knowing neither vice nor virtue, but playful and loving, pouring out affection, humour, ideas, plans, stories, words from her rich cornucopia of personality.” —Anne Scott-James
“This book is a jewel: the prose is immaculate, the delineation of the human heart is unclouded by sentiment, and, in terms of contemporary feminism, it is almost on par with Freud’s Dora. An excellent study of the etiology of hysteria, Journey Iinto Tthe Mind’s Eye is one of the charter myths of contemporary women’s studies.” —Kevin McGrath, Harvard Review
“It is hard to classify her as a writer, unless as a scholarly romantic in a school of her own. Such is the depth of her research that other writers plunder her books shamelessly.” —Maureen Cleave, The Daily Telegraph
“One of the finest books about Russia … one of the best travel books of its generation.” —Spectator
“A jewel-filled narrative — breathtaking, exotic and brilliant.” —Newsday
“A curiously beautiful daydream of a book … irresistible reading.” —Tom Driberg, People
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