A selection of beautifully written essays on life in New York as a father, husband, and observer of the cultural scene. There is a particularly moving and enlightening description of the Bill Evans trio's storied sessions decades ago at the Village Vanguard.

I received this book as a Christmas present, and took it with me on holiday to Japan ... because I wished that I were going to New York but was not.

I expected a book of stories about life in New York. While I got this in some ways I got it in such a way as to be at times rendered speechless. This book contains laugh out loud elements (stories of his children) and parts which brought me to tears (the ending of the Giant Metrozoids). It has also inspired me to do a whole lot more reading, all the books which Gopnik refers to are now on my reading list.

I am not a New Yorker, but, after a week there in 2006 now miss this city so desperately from my home in Australia, that I am amazed. Gopnik captured my feelings in this book. The moments of clarity that I had to share with the people I was travelling with, and will become pearls of wisdom for staff meetings when I am required to talk.

Would I recommend this book? Of this I am unsure. It is a highly observationalist book, looking at the society in which the author lives and grasping for the truth that is found within. It is also in the nature of critical literacy, so some deep thinking is required on the part of the reader. I usually read a book every day or two when travelling (particularly when in a country where English is not found readily) my addiction is to the pages, not the 'screens or cards'. But this book took me nearly two weeks, and I feel a need now to re-read it. To high light and mark the pearls I have discovered in the manner of a university text so that I can give these the true depth of consideration they deserve.

All in all though, this was a book I can see myself reading again and again one which spoke to my soul so truly that I can hear the sirens of NYC echoing down the streets, smell the hotdog venders and feel the wind in my face. This book will tide me over until I get to go back again.

I have some sympathy with the caustic review of "Mr Picky" below, not because I have the same distaste for Adam Gopnik's work (quite the reverse), but because I agree that all of Gopnik's work is, essentially, about himself. Not only that, but where his subject veers away from himself, or those closest to him, he becomes far less interesting and insightful.

Having said that, there is no doubt that Gopnik is a very, very good writer. It is his lucid and insightful writing that not only saves this (and his other) book from the pretentious and self-indugent exercise that it would have been from just about any other writer, but which provides genuine pleasures that make it a very entertaining and rewarding read.

Gopnik's subjects are, as others have noted, New York and his children. The best sections by far are those dealing with his relations with his children. The further he moves from that subject, the less interesting his writing becomes, and the duller his prose style. There is a chapter on "switch hotels" and parakeets. I am still not sure what that chapter is about, or why switch hotels needed an essay written about them, or what the connection is with parakeets. There is also an article on the great Bill Evans and his Village Vanguard recordings. There is an enormous amount to say about these performances, but Gopnik struggles to say anything genuinely interesting. These pieces seem sincere but dutiful, and somewhat laboured. Even his 9/11 pieces suffer from a worthy but dull quality. It is only when Gopnik turns back to his children and his close friends that his writing again becomes enlivened and interesting.

I agree with Mr Picky that there is a certain amount of literary pretentiousness which comes through many of Gopnik's essays. The names of literary heavyweights are dropped with a little more regularity than is strictly necessary. But in a way, these kinds of allusions have their own charm, in the same way that they do in many of Woody Allen's movies. In fact, Gopnik and his friends could well have walked straight out of Woody Allen's "Manhattan".

I always enjoy reading Gopnik. Ever since I first encountered the essay "Man Goes to See a Doctor" in the New Yorker many years ago (the essay is also collected in this book), which I regularly re-read, I have always looked out for Gopnik's work and always read it with considerable pleasure. The only reservation I have is that, as noted above, Gopnik is only at his best with the subjects of himself, his children, his friends and his immediate vicinity; and those subjects have a certain banality which is evaded only by the quality of his writing. Every generation re-discovers the experience of raising children as if it is the first ever to do so. Almost every Sunday paper in every major city has a columnist describing the amusing antics of their young family. Only Gopnik's intelligence and insights save his essays from the usual Sunday column banality.

Despite some reservations about the limitations of his subject matter, this is genuinely a very enjoyable book, and Gopnik is undoubtedly a talented writer. "Through the Children's Gate" is highly recommended.