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Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions
A sharp and entertaining essay collection about the importance of multiple forms of love and friendship in a world designed for couples, from a laser-precise new voice.
Sometimes it seems like there are two American creeds, self-reliance and marriage, and neither of them is mine. I experience myself as someone formed and sustained by others' love and patience, by student loans and stipends, by the kindness of strangers.
Briallen Hopper's Hard to Love honors the categories of loves and relationships beyond marriage, the ones that are often treated as invisible or seen as secondary--friendships, kinship with adult siblings, care teams that form in times of illness, or various alternative family formations. She also values difficult and amorphous loves like loving a challenging job or inanimate objects that can't love you back. She draws from personal experience, sharing stories about her loving but combative family, the fiercely independent Emerson scholar who pushed her away, and the friends who have become her invented or found family; pop culture touchstones like the Women's March, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, and the timeless series Cheers; and the work of writers like Joan Didion, Gwendolyn Brooks, Flannery O'Connor, and Herman Melville (Moby-Dick like you've never seen it!).
Hard to Love pays homage and attention to unlikely friends and lovers both real and fictional. It is a series of love letters to the meaningful, if underappreciated, forms of intimacy and community that are tricky, tangled, and tough, but ultimately sustaining.
Sometimes it seems like there are two American creeds, self-reliance and marriage, and neither of them is mine. I experience myself as someone formed and sustained by others' love and patience, by student loans and stipends, by the kindness of strangers.
Briallen Hopper's Hard to Love honors the categories of loves and relationships beyond marriage, the ones that are often treated as invisible or seen as secondary--friendships, kinship with adult siblings, care teams that form in times of illness, or various alternative family formations. She also values difficult and amorphous loves like loving a challenging job or inanimate objects that can't love you back. She draws from personal experience, sharing stories about her loving but combative family, the fiercely independent Emerson scholar who pushed her away, and the friends who have become her invented or found family; pop culture touchstones like the Women's March, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, and the timeless series Cheers; and the work of writers like Joan Didion, Gwendolyn Brooks, Flannery O'Connor, and Herman Melville (Moby-Dick like you've never seen it!).
Hard to Love pays homage and attention to unlikely friends and lovers both real and fictional. It is a series of love letters to the meaningful, if underappreciated, forms of intimacy and community that are tricky, tangled, and tough, but ultimately sustaining.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published February 5, 2019
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March 30, 2019
In some ways I feel like I have waited for this essay collection all my life. In Hard to Love, Briallen Hopper rejects the rigid dichotomy so often enforced in society: marry your romantic partner and live happily ever after, or grow old and die alone. Hopper trail blazes a courageous newer path, where she finds connection and love with her close friends. She also celebrates other underappreciated forms of love, like love of writing and art and love between siblings. I so appreciated how Hopper shows the messiness of these relationships, like the turmoil she experienced with her friend Cathy when she moved in with her, or how her bond with her brother grew distant in part because of their differing religious and political beliefs. Above all, Hopper's writing flows with intelligence and a willingness to unpack assumptions. Her compassion for herself, her friends, and her family shine clear. One quote about chosen family that made my heart grow warm:
"What I love about found family is that it can accommodate all the love and meals and holidays and hospital visits of any other family - all the true confessions and late-night conversations and child chaos and quotidian mess and hugs and endearments and quantity time; and yet it is often kinder than original family, and more miraculous, because it is a gift given when you are old enough to appreciate it, a commitment continuously made when you know what that commitment costs and means. A family found in adulthood can never attain the involuntary intimacy of the siblings who have known you since birth, and squabbled with you in bathrooms and at breakfast tables from time immemorial. But sometimes, perhaps for this reason, a found family can know and love you for who you are - not for who you once were, or who you never were."
I feel like I have waited for these essays all my life because I write about the glorification of romance and my love for my friends on my blog all the freaking time. Just last week I texted one of my close friends A that I wish I saw examples of women and femmes who basked in their singleness and close friends, because I often only see people enmeshed in romantic relationships or single people desperate to escape singlehood.
Through herself in Hard to Love, Hopper offers that example of a woman finding love with her friends and her writing. Two of the essays toward the start of the collection, "Lean On" and "On Spinsters," blew me away with the depth of their insight. "Lean On" acts as a radical defense of relying on others, especially outside of romantic relationships, in a society that encourages self-reliance and detachment. "On Spinsters" serves as an ode to single women and those throughout history who have built loving relationships outside the government-sanctioned institution of marriage. These two essays worked their way into my heart and into the list of top essays I have ever read with ease. A short paragraph from On Spinsters that wowed me (one of many):
"I cling to the word 'spinster' in the second decade of the twenty-first century because it serves as a challenge to the way our society still conflates coupledom with love, maturity, and citizenship, while seeing unmarried people as - to quote Justice Kennedy - 'condemned to live in loneliness.' And, to borrow a phrase from second-wave historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, I cling to the word because it links me with my spinster sisters throughout history in a shared 'female world of love and ritual.' I cling to it and hold it close because, to riff on a refrain from Hilton Als, it's the spinsters who made me."
Hopper covers so much amazing ground in terms of writing that centers friendship and other forms of non-romantic intimacy. She writes about how she and a group of friends formed a care team for their friend who got diagnosed with cancer and did not have a partner to rely on. She shares, with great vulnerability and sincerity, about her search for sperm so she can have a child without a traditional romance in tow. She analyzes a show she loves, Cheers unpacking its dynamics of romance and friendship and what works and does not work within a feminist framework. These essays showcase Hopper's versatility as a writer. They highlight how writers have so much ground to cover outside of romance, a radical notion for women and femmes in particular.
I would recommend these essays to absolutely everyone, especially those who also want to nurture love in friendship and in other non-romantic forms. The collection is perhaps not perfect - I felt that some of the essays toward the end (e.g., "The Stars") could have benefited from a firmer thematic connection to the other essays. I also wish Hopper had done more to unpack her white, cis privilege in her essay on the Women's March, as she did a fabulous job of doing so in her essay "The Foundling Museum." Still, I cherished this collection so much and am grateful for the feminist ideas and genuine love it contributes to the literary canon. An excellent essay collection that I hope helps others appreciate and cultivate their own many types of love.
"What I love about found family is that it can accommodate all the love and meals and holidays and hospital visits of any other family - all the true confessions and late-night conversations and child chaos and quotidian mess and hugs and endearments and quantity time; and yet it is often kinder than original family, and more miraculous, because it is a gift given when you are old enough to appreciate it, a commitment continuously made when you know what that commitment costs and means. A family found in adulthood can never attain the involuntary intimacy of the siblings who have known you since birth, and squabbled with you in bathrooms and at breakfast tables from time immemorial. But sometimes, perhaps for this reason, a found family can know and love you for who you are - not for who you once were, or who you never were."
I feel like I have waited for these essays all my life because I write about the glorification of romance and my love for my friends on my blog all the freaking time. Just last week I texted one of my close friends A that I wish I saw examples of women and femmes who basked in their singleness and close friends, because I often only see people enmeshed in romantic relationships or single people desperate to escape singlehood.
Through herself in Hard to Love, Hopper offers that example of a woman finding love with her friends and her writing. Two of the essays toward the start of the collection, "Lean On" and "On Spinsters," blew me away with the depth of their insight. "Lean On" acts as a radical defense of relying on others, especially outside of romantic relationships, in a society that encourages self-reliance and detachment. "On Spinsters" serves as an ode to single women and those throughout history who have built loving relationships outside the government-sanctioned institution of marriage. These two essays worked their way into my heart and into the list of top essays I have ever read with ease. A short paragraph from On Spinsters that wowed me (one of many):
"I cling to the word 'spinster' in the second decade of the twenty-first century because it serves as a challenge to the way our society still conflates coupledom with love, maturity, and citizenship, while seeing unmarried people as - to quote Justice Kennedy - 'condemned to live in loneliness.' And, to borrow a phrase from second-wave historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, I cling to the word because it links me with my spinster sisters throughout history in a shared 'female world of love and ritual.' I cling to it and hold it close because, to riff on a refrain from Hilton Als, it's the spinsters who made me."
Hopper covers so much amazing ground in terms of writing that centers friendship and other forms of non-romantic intimacy. She writes about how she and a group of friends formed a care team for their friend who got diagnosed with cancer and did not have a partner to rely on. She shares, with great vulnerability and sincerity, about her search for sperm so she can have a child without a traditional romance in tow. She analyzes a show she loves, Cheers unpacking its dynamics of romance and friendship and what works and does not work within a feminist framework. These essays showcase Hopper's versatility as a writer. They highlight how writers have so much ground to cover outside of romance, a radical notion for women and femmes in particular.
I would recommend these essays to absolutely everyone, especially those who also want to nurture love in friendship and in other non-romantic forms. The collection is perhaps not perfect - I felt that some of the essays toward the end (e.g., "The Stars") could have benefited from a firmer thematic connection to the other essays. I also wish Hopper had done more to unpack her white, cis privilege in her essay on the Women's March, as she did a fabulous job of doing so in her essay "The Foundling Museum." Still, I cherished this collection so much and am grateful for the feminist ideas and genuine love it contributes to the literary canon. An excellent essay collection that I hope helps others appreciate and cultivate their own many types of love.
May 15, 2018
The best book I've ever written!
January 21, 2019
What could happen if we declared and even celebrated our mutual dependency on our friends and siblings, or on our church, work, political and other communities? What if we acknowledged the deep meaning we derive from our feelings for the books and movies and television that are most dear to us, or even the love we have for our most honored possessions? This book suggests that all of these kinds of undersung love can offer us nourishing alternatives to the two paths most often celebrated in American life: rugged individualism and marrying off. Hard to Love begins with an essay called “Lean On” that is an insightful takedown of the value of Emersonian self-reliance, an essay that is both deeply funny and a persuasive rallying cry for honoring all of these different kinds of relationships. Hopper embodies “Self-Reliance” in the person of her grad school boyfriend (at the end of her long and ultimately disappointing romance with this broad-shouldered Californian rugged individualist, she begins to learn the key lesson of this book: "Rather than resting all my weight on one unreliable man, I began to spread myself out. I learned to practice mutual, broadly distributed leaning: to depend on care that was neither compulsory nor conditional, and on lavish, unrationed, unanticipated kindness.")
What I love best about Hopper’s essays is that they combine spiritual wisdom and encouragement (she is a preacher), eloquence (she is a writing teacher), astute cultural criticism (she has a Ph.D. in American literature from Princeton), and a deeply endearing comic, self-effacing glamour (she is a red-lipstick and faux-fur wearing diva in the Mae West/Anita Loos/Dorothy Parker/Ma Rainey tradition). She writes about all kinds of things—her personal pantheon of objects and experiences that embody the kind of leaning she celebrates: the Women’s March, the sitcoms Cheers and The Golden Girls, baking for her students, forming part of a care team for a friend with cancer, her large family (she is part of a group of creative sisters reminiscent of Austen, Brontë, Alcott). The funniest essays in the collection, like “How to Be Single,” are the kind of pieces you want to circulate gleefully on Facebook because everyone needs to read them; the most profound, like the one on reading Flannery O’Connor’s prayer journals with a friend facing terminal illness, are the kind you want to turn to when facing your own darkest nights of the soul.
Hopper knows herself well and harbors few illusions. She looks at things as honestly as she can, even when looking is painful—she does not hide from her own vulnerabilities or her privileges-- but still she transforms and lifts everything up in the light of her empathy and endless fascination and her wit.
Some books I might compare this to are: Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things, Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, Samantha Irby’s We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, and Lindy West’s Shrill. Like these books, Hopper’s writing is intimate, entertaining, absent of clichés (she would never let herself sink into one), and a balm for life’s scariest moments as well as its more mundane ones. She writes about navigating the plot of a woman’s life after having “missed the boat” (for whatever variety of reasons) of marriage, home ownership, and children—she takes us on journeys involving roommates and sperm donation clinics and precarious jobs, all buoyed by relationships with friends that only deepen as she realizes how much she honors these bonds and how sturdy they are.
I should confess that the author is a close friend of mine. Together we’ve slumber-party-watched The Best Years of Our Lives and Desk Set and co-baked Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake recipe. We’ve been students in grad seminars together, taught together, and are now members of the same beloved writing group. Sharing this review feels like a tribute to the kind of “leaning on” described in Hard to Love. In Bri’s book the voices and names and stories of her friends are everywhere. As one of them, let me say say how glad I am that inspiration to practice the art and religion of “leaning on,” whether over cocktails or hospital beds, will extend beyond her immediate circle—welcome to the Briallen Hopper lifestyle! (soundtrack by Rodgers and Hart).
What I love best about Hopper’s essays is that they combine spiritual wisdom and encouragement (she is a preacher), eloquence (she is a writing teacher), astute cultural criticism (she has a Ph.D. in American literature from Princeton), and a deeply endearing comic, self-effacing glamour (she is a red-lipstick and faux-fur wearing diva in the Mae West/Anita Loos/Dorothy Parker/Ma Rainey tradition). She writes about all kinds of things—her personal pantheon of objects and experiences that embody the kind of leaning she celebrates: the Women’s March, the sitcoms Cheers and The Golden Girls, baking for her students, forming part of a care team for a friend with cancer, her large family (she is part of a group of creative sisters reminiscent of Austen, Brontë, Alcott). The funniest essays in the collection, like “How to Be Single,” are the kind of pieces you want to circulate gleefully on Facebook because everyone needs to read them; the most profound, like the one on reading Flannery O’Connor’s prayer journals with a friend facing terminal illness, are the kind you want to turn to when facing your own darkest nights of the soul.
Hopper knows herself well and harbors few illusions. She looks at things as honestly as she can, even when looking is painful—she does not hide from her own vulnerabilities or her privileges-- but still she transforms and lifts everything up in the light of her empathy and endless fascination and her wit.
Some books I might compare this to are: Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things, Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, Samantha Irby’s We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, and Lindy West’s Shrill. Like these books, Hopper’s writing is intimate, entertaining, absent of clichés (she would never let herself sink into one), and a balm for life’s scariest moments as well as its more mundane ones. She writes about navigating the plot of a woman’s life after having “missed the boat” (for whatever variety of reasons) of marriage, home ownership, and children—she takes us on journeys involving roommates and sperm donation clinics and precarious jobs, all buoyed by relationships with friends that only deepen as she realizes how much she honors these bonds and how sturdy they are.
I should confess that the author is a close friend of mine. Together we’ve slumber-party-watched The Best Years of Our Lives and Desk Set and co-baked Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake recipe. We’ve been students in grad seminars together, taught together, and are now members of the same beloved writing group. Sharing this review feels like a tribute to the kind of “leaning on” described in Hard to Love. In Bri’s book the voices and names and stories of her friends are everywhere. As one of them, let me say say how glad I am that inspiration to practice the art and religion of “leaning on,” whether over cocktails or hospital beds, will extend beyond her immediate circle—welcome to the Briallen Hopper lifestyle! (soundtrack by Rodgers and Hart).
August 7, 2018
I’ve been reading Briallen Hopper’s insightful prose for many years, and I’m excited to see all of her best work in one beautiful volume.
Imagine if an Anne-of-Green-Gables-esque young woman grew up in late twentieth-century Washington state, wrote a dissertation on Uncle Tom’s Cabin and James Baldwin, had an encyclopedic knowledge of everything from cocktails to the Golden Girls, and went on to teach at Yale and Queens College. And she can play the piano! But she’s a real person!
Absolute must-reads are her definitive essay on The Fault in Our Stars and her magisterial (no other word suffices) reexamination of the concept of the spinster.
Imagine if an Anne-of-Green-Gables-esque young woman grew up in late twentieth-century Washington state, wrote a dissertation on Uncle Tom’s Cabin and James Baldwin, had an encyclopedic knowledge of everything from cocktails to the Golden Girls, and went on to teach at Yale and Queens College. And she can play the piano! But she’s a real person!
Absolute must-reads are her definitive essay on The Fault in Our Stars and her magisterial (no other word suffices) reexamination of the concept of the spinster.
January 29, 2019
If Carrie Bradshaw were v much smarter, more intersectional & more anti-racist & capitalist, this might be the book she'd write. We are in need of all the narratives about lives that do not proceed along a coupling, marriage, & baby track & Hopper's are better than most. I particularly appreciated the way she leaves open the space for both/and and neither/nor, ala "Sometimes it seems like there are two American creeds, self-reliance and marriage, and neither of them is mine." 10/10 would binge again
January 12, 2020
I wanted to love this book so much. I was excited to explore manifestations of love outside of romantic coupling and the traditional marital pathway, to see an author talk unabashedly about the value of friendship and other meaningful relationships that are too often devalued in our society. Instead, I struggled to connect with Hopper or even understand the point of many of her essays.
I think my main issue was a typical, it’s-me-not-you problem: I couldn’t connect with Hopper. Part of this was just the abundance of cultural references she used that I had no awareness of or connection to. I’ve never watched Cheers or heard of the “Pandora in Blue Jeans” or read anything by Joan Didion. While I don’t think having knowledge of these things is necessary to read Hard to Love, repeatedly reading essays that drew upon cultural references I was clueless to led me to feel disengaged.
That said, Hard to Love did stimulate plenty of thinking. There were lines and paragraphs scattered throughout the book that made me pause. Some essays were stronger than others. “Lean On: A Declaration of Dependence” was a wonderful examination of the importance of depending on others. I agree with Hopper that “independence is an illusion” and that the American obsession with self-reliance does more harm than good. As Hopper mentions, “I could never clear away the cloud of social meaning that surrounds and supports me, and I don’t see why I should want to try” (p. 16).
Yet other essays didn’t jive with me in the way that I think Hopper intended. For example, I felt “On Spinsters” was more grating than empowering. Although, I did appreciate how she addressed the contributions of queer and African American people to spinsterhood—“I’ve come to realize that I owe an immeasurable debt to the intersecting groups of people who have historically been barred from the privileges of marriage by law and demography and have learned to create intimate lives apart from it” (p. 52; an excellent example of one of those lovely sentences that Hopper is so good at sprinkling here and there).
Overall, I was disappointed because this book wasn’t the book I wanted it to be. And, I could never fully connect with Hopper or her writing. There were flashes here and there that made me pause, and essays whose overall ideas made me thoughtful, but the overall product unfortunately just didn’t inspire me in the way I’d hoped it would.
I think my main issue was a typical, it’s-me-not-you problem: I couldn’t connect with Hopper. Part of this was just the abundance of cultural references she used that I had no awareness of or connection to. I’ve never watched Cheers or heard of the “Pandora in Blue Jeans” or read anything by Joan Didion. While I don’t think having knowledge of these things is necessary to read Hard to Love, repeatedly reading essays that drew upon cultural references I was clueless to led me to feel disengaged.
That said, Hard to Love did stimulate plenty of thinking. There were lines and paragraphs scattered throughout the book that made me pause. Some essays were stronger than others. “Lean On: A Declaration of Dependence” was a wonderful examination of the importance of depending on others. I agree with Hopper that “independence is an illusion” and that the American obsession with self-reliance does more harm than good. As Hopper mentions, “I could never clear away the cloud of social meaning that surrounds and supports me, and I don’t see why I should want to try” (p. 16).
Yet other essays didn’t jive with me in the way that I think Hopper intended. For example, I felt “On Spinsters” was more grating than empowering. Although, I did appreciate how she addressed the contributions of queer and African American people to spinsterhood—“I’ve come to realize that I owe an immeasurable debt to the intersecting groups of people who have historically been barred from the privileges of marriage by law and demography and have learned to create intimate lives apart from it” (p. 52; an excellent example of one of those lovely sentences that Hopper is so good at sprinkling here and there).
Overall, I was disappointed because this book wasn’t the book I wanted it to be. And, I could never fully connect with Hopper or her writing. There were flashes here and there that made me pause, and essays whose overall ideas made me thoughtful, but the overall product unfortunately just didn’t inspire me in the way I’d hoped it would.
April 1, 2019
I so enjoyed the company of this book.
July 21, 2019
This book is not hard to love; indeed, I found it impossible not to love and barely possible to put down. Then I hesitated before the last chapter because I was so sad to leave the essayist's company. I have a list in the notebook I carry around everywhere of all the women friends I'd like to send it to. I was so sad that it ended that I'm looking forward to a lingering reread already, not to mention to following Hopper's career from here on out.
It's an unassuming book--a collection of essays, many of which were originally book reviews or literary blog posts: chapters about her family and friends, her favorite films, beloved writers. But the cumulative force of Hopper's voice, which is by turns erudite and funny, confiding and critical, makes the collection sing as an ode to friendship; to communities beyond the nuclear family; to women's abilities and intimacies; to writing as a search both for self-expression and for the sacred. Each sentence is so beautifully shaped without being belabored; it seems effortless yet can't be, given that elegance. She is clear-sighted in her view of herself and her own complicity in some of the most complicated and painful relationships and experiences she has had, yet she practices capacious forgiveness, both of others and of herself, recognizing the contribution even of the people we love and lose to our life stories and our worldview.
Some of my favorite essays in the collection were about mid-century women writers Grace Metalious (the close reading of her Peyton Place author photo may be the new opening to my graduate course on twentieth-century US women writers) and Shirley Jackson (one of my all-time favorites). In another essay, Hopper describes the barbed closeness between sisters, lambasting the saccharine depiction of the same relation in the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler movie Sisters. By way of J. D. Salinger, she writes about her lifelong debates with her estranged brother; in another chapter (one near and dear to my heart), she writes about baking as shared solace, and I can't wait to make her vegan chocolate cupcakes recipe with the decidedly not-vegan peanut butter cream cheese icing. Her consideration of Cheers and its presentation of class dynamics and midlife despair is a triumph. It is a pleasure to follow the way her mind works, wending in one direction until you think you see the culmination of that train of thought, and then turning self-critically in another direction in order to expand the view.
Growing up in a large evangelical family, Hopper has had life experiences far afield from my own, and yet I recognized intimately so many of her feelings and observations. This is the gift of the personal essayist, to draw from the idiosyncrasy of experience insights that shape many lives, not merely her own. In divinity school, Hopper helped care for a close friend who had esophageal cancer; her chapters on writing letters to Flannery O'Connor (as well as prayers) and on serving as a member of the care team are beautiful reflections on the body and vulnerability, the importance of friendship and the ubiquity of crisis. The structure of her essays shifts unobtrusively yet compellingly from chapter to chapter; for example, her chapter on her reproductive struggles is brilliantly framed by the game DICK, a riff on Cards Against Humanity that uses Melville quotations to answer life questions with double entendres.
A collector of tea cups, a baker of gingerbread, and lover of pastel Victorian houses, Hopper celebrates, like Gwendolyn Brooks does in Maud Martha, a novella she writes about beautifully here, the aesthetics of the everyday. She recognizes the beauty in our rough edges, our inevitable incompletion, and she celebrates the process of writing as a way of honoring that longing for, and sometime achievement of, connection.
It's an unassuming book--a collection of essays, many of which were originally book reviews or literary blog posts: chapters about her family and friends, her favorite films, beloved writers. But the cumulative force of Hopper's voice, which is by turns erudite and funny, confiding and critical, makes the collection sing as an ode to friendship; to communities beyond the nuclear family; to women's abilities and intimacies; to writing as a search both for self-expression and for the sacred. Each sentence is so beautifully shaped without being belabored; it seems effortless yet can't be, given that elegance. She is clear-sighted in her view of herself and her own complicity in some of the most complicated and painful relationships and experiences she has had, yet she practices capacious forgiveness, both of others and of herself, recognizing the contribution even of the people we love and lose to our life stories and our worldview.
Some of my favorite essays in the collection were about mid-century women writers Grace Metalious (the close reading of her Peyton Place author photo may be the new opening to my graduate course on twentieth-century US women writers) and Shirley Jackson (one of my all-time favorites). In another essay, Hopper describes the barbed closeness between sisters, lambasting the saccharine depiction of the same relation in the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler movie Sisters. By way of J. D. Salinger, she writes about her lifelong debates with her estranged brother; in another chapter (one near and dear to my heart), she writes about baking as shared solace, and I can't wait to make her vegan chocolate cupcakes recipe with the decidedly not-vegan peanut butter cream cheese icing. Her consideration of Cheers and its presentation of class dynamics and midlife despair is a triumph. It is a pleasure to follow the way her mind works, wending in one direction until you think you see the culmination of that train of thought, and then turning self-critically in another direction in order to expand the view.
Growing up in a large evangelical family, Hopper has had life experiences far afield from my own, and yet I recognized intimately so many of her feelings and observations. This is the gift of the personal essayist, to draw from the idiosyncrasy of experience insights that shape many lives, not merely her own. In divinity school, Hopper helped care for a close friend who had esophageal cancer; her chapters on writing letters to Flannery O'Connor (as well as prayers) and on serving as a member of the care team are beautiful reflections on the body and vulnerability, the importance of friendship and the ubiquity of crisis. The structure of her essays shifts unobtrusively yet compellingly from chapter to chapter; for example, her chapter on her reproductive struggles is brilliantly framed by the game DICK, a riff on Cards Against Humanity that uses Melville quotations to answer life questions with double entendres.
A collector of tea cups, a baker of gingerbread, and lover of pastel Victorian houses, Hopper celebrates, like Gwendolyn Brooks does in Maud Martha, a novella she writes about beautifully here, the aesthetics of the everyday. She recognizes the beauty in our rough edges, our inevitable incompletion, and she celebrates the process of writing as a way of honoring that longing for, and sometime achievement of, connection.
April 1, 2019
The first essay was great! The rest were fine, but took too much time relating a theme to a book, movie, or TV show, sometimes spending several pages describing their plots. That's not what I was looking for.
July 11, 2021
As with most essay collections, there's going to be some entries that are stronger than others. Really, I think I went into this book expecting something other than what it ended up being. While I enjoyed some parts, I was largely disappointed by the book as a whole.
It's still a fine book for the right person. I found it to be well-written and generally engaging, but I think the blurb was fairly misleading. I thought we were going to be exploring a myriad of non-romantic relationships and forms of love, and while there were some essays that focused on that, there were plenty of others that tended to ramble from topic to topic, such as the one about the author's relentless quest to find a sperm donor. While one could argue that that was an exploration of maternal love or something (and there were some nods to friendships in it as well), it seemed to be more about how many Moby Dick jokes the author could crack for the duration of the essay.
Also, I'm so tired of the trope/idea about how sisters must always secretly--or even not so secretly--hate one another and can never actually be friends. It's one thing to say that your relationship with your sisters might be like that, Ms. Hopper, but please don't try to make it out to be a universal truth.
And, yeah, I think that's about all I have to say about Hard to Love.
It's still a fine book for the right person. I found it to be well-written and generally engaging, but I think the blurb was fairly misleading. I thought we were going to be exploring a myriad of non-romantic relationships and forms of love, and while there were some essays that focused on that, there were plenty of others that tended to ramble from topic to topic, such as the one about the author's relentless quest to find a sperm donor. While one could argue that that was an exploration of maternal love or something (and there were some nods to friendships in it as well), it seemed to be more about how many Moby Dick jokes the author could crack for the duration of the essay.
Also, I'm so tired of the trope/idea about how sisters must always secretly--or even not so secretly--hate one another and can never actually be friends. It's one thing to say that your relationship with your sisters might be like that, Ms. Hopper, but please don't try to make it out to be a universal truth.
And, yeah, I think that's about all I have to say about Hard to Love.
April 24, 2019
I’m quoting here so my friends back in the Midwest might see what I’ve been trying to tell them, but they refuse to really see:
“Chronically unmarried women have long endured the injustice of being set aside, ignored, dismissed, made invisible.”
“...all too often female independence without the approval stamp of male desire is seen as a source of shame, and blamed on the spinsters supposed spiritual or sexual frigidity, and/or her ugly or invisible body. Spinsterhood is commonly interpreted as a symptom of a guarded soul and hardened heart” (or in my case not spiritual enough or working too hard or not caring about my looks)
And my favorite... because I need people to lean on too...
“The couple form are still the legal and social prerequisites for sharing of resources and lives... This arbitrary conflation of marriage with the commitments and responsibilities of adult life sometimes turns unmarried people into second-class citizens, while devaluing many necessary forms of love.”
I have long been void of hugs, sharing life and emotional burdens. To tell others, they get defensive of the way that they choose. which is marriage and it is wonderful. But I did not choose spinsterhood. And while the church gives lip-service to this as a blessing, for women it has been a way to put them aside. Im often treated as not quite an adult. I have been told that people will not reach out to me, but to go serve families in the church... that that is my only avenue to relationships. However, I just need friends and connection. While I am happy to serve where I can, as a teacher I need people also to pour into me. Without the marriage form of care, I am left with few to support me when I am exhausted of service all day emotionally and physically for other people’s children working 60+ hour work weeks. Then people just tell me to find a man (like I haven’t tried). But what I really want “is not the closure of a marriage plot... but an end to the emotional exclusion experienced as an odd and ugly spinster.”
Briallen Hopper gets it! And this books reminds me that my experience as a single women in the church and community in general is valid, rather than the gaslighting I was experiencing regularly from my once most valued friendships.
Thanks Bri (I feel like we are on a first name basis... forgive me for that).
“Chronically unmarried women have long endured the injustice of being set aside, ignored, dismissed, made invisible.”
“...all too often female independence without the approval stamp of male desire is seen as a source of shame, and blamed on the spinsters supposed spiritual or sexual frigidity, and/or her ugly or invisible body. Spinsterhood is commonly interpreted as a symptom of a guarded soul and hardened heart” (or in my case not spiritual enough or working too hard or not caring about my looks)
And my favorite... because I need people to lean on too...
“The couple form are still the legal and social prerequisites for sharing of resources and lives... This arbitrary conflation of marriage with the commitments and responsibilities of adult life sometimes turns unmarried people into second-class citizens, while devaluing many necessary forms of love.”
I have long been void of hugs, sharing life and emotional burdens. To tell others, they get defensive of the way that they choose. which is marriage and it is wonderful. But I did not choose spinsterhood. And while the church gives lip-service to this as a blessing, for women it has been a way to put them aside. Im often treated as not quite an adult. I have been told that people will not reach out to me, but to go serve families in the church... that that is my only avenue to relationships. However, I just need friends and connection. While I am happy to serve where I can, as a teacher I need people also to pour into me. Without the marriage form of care, I am left with few to support me when I am exhausted of service all day emotionally and physically for other people’s children working 60+ hour work weeks. Then people just tell me to find a man (like I haven’t tried). But what I really want “is not the closure of a marriage plot... but an end to the emotional exclusion experienced as an odd and ugly spinster.”
Briallen Hopper gets it! And this books reminds me that my experience as a single women in the church and community in general is valid, rather than the gaslighting I was experiencing regularly from my once most valued friendships.
Thanks Bri (I feel like we are on a first name basis... forgive me for that).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 2, 2019
Briallen Hopper writes about her relationship with female friends and sisters. She writes about writers, books and TV shows. Above of all, she writes about women. Reading it is like talking to your long term friend who is a compassionate and intelligent, even though our background can not be more different. Like her, I too value female friendship highly. Like her, I did in the past attempt to revive a dead friendship.
My favorite essays in this collection:
-- Lean On: A Declaration of Dependence (I like to lean too. Mutual dependence is the necessity for a friendship)
-- On Spinsters (Very sharp, very thoughtful)
-- Hoarding (Collecting small objects as memory reminders is what I do all the time. Totally understand why she feels giving up things is like abandoning pieces of your past; yes, even best friends need to maintain boundary, but true friends will make it up eventually.)
-- On Sisters (sisters may be your best friends and worst enemies, but they will take you in when nobody else will)
-- Young Adult Cancer Story
-- Coasting
-- The Foundling Museum
-- Moby-Dick
Quotes:
"A family found in adulthood can never attain the involuntary intimacy of the siblings who have known you since birth, and squabbled with you in bathrooms and at breakfast tables from time immemorial. But sometimes, perhaps for this reason, a found family can know and love you for who you are - not for who you once were, or who you never were."
"I cling to the word 'spinster' in the second decade of the twenty-first century because it serves as a challenge to the way our society still conflates coupledom with love, maturity, and citizenship, while seeing unmarried people as - to quote Justice Kennedy - 'condemned to live in loneliness.' And, to borrow a phrase from second-wave historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, I cling to the word because it links me with my spinster sisters throughout history in a shared 'female world of love and ritual.' I cling to it and hold it close because, to riff on a refrain from Hilton Als, it's the spinsters who made me."
My favorite essays in this collection:
-- Lean On: A Declaration of Dependence (I like to lean too. Mutual dependence is the necessity for a friendship)
-- On Spinsters (Very sharp, very thoughtful)
-- Hoarding (Collecting small objects as memory reminders is what I do all the time. Totally understand why she feels giving up things is like abandoning pieces of your past; yes, even best friends need to maintain boundary, but true friends will make it up eventually.)
-- On Sisters (sisters may be your best friends and worst enemies, but they will take you in when nobody else will)
-- Young Adult Cancer Story
-- Coasting
-- The Foundling Museum
-- Moby-Dick
Quotes:
"A family found in adulthood can never attain the involuntary intimacy of the siblings who have known you since birth, and squabbled with you in bathrooms and at breakfast tables from time immemorial. But sometimes, perhaps for this reason, a found family can know and love you for who you are - not for who you once were, or who you never were."
"I cling to the word 'spinster' in the second decade of the twenty-first century because it serves as a challenge to the way our society still conflates coupledom with love, maturity, and citizenship, while seeing unmarried people as - to quote Justice Kennedy - 'condemned to live in loneliness.' And, to borrow a phrase from second-wave historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, I cling to the word because it links me with my spinster sisters throughout history in a shared 'female world of love and ritual.' I cling to it and hold it close because, to riff on a refrain from Hilton Als, it's the spinsters who made me."
November 22, 2018
this helped me a lot when i needed it most. so many quotes really stood out to me. this book gave me strength in myself that kept trying to hide its face from my own self. i also really enjoyed learning about Cheers.
"The paradox was that my newfound self-reliance was a symptom of my utter reliance on him. I depended on his demand that I not depend. I leaned on not leaning on him. The irony was he left me anyway."
"I was ashamed that I needed him emotionally and existentially in ways he didn’t seem to need me."
"And I was ashamed of my willingness to settle for a love life in which my desire to twine like a vine was constantly thwarted by a man who was always carefully disentangling himself from my tendrils and tentacles."
"I was a leaning willow, and when my man could and did detach himself from me, I learned that leaning willows , unlike mighty oaks, are built to withstand quakes and storms. They can bend almost to the ground without breaking."
"Even our faults and flaws can become bearable when mediated through the eyes of others, since our closest friends can show us the awful sides of ourselves that we would never have seen, but in ways that sharpen us instead of wearing us away."
"“Codependence” is a beautiful word that could mean mutual support but instead means mutual harm."
"Leaning, or being leaned on, can make one feel luscious, melting, known, held, solid, suspended, steely, light. It can also make one feel used, worn out, weak, diminished, infantilized, guarded, sick, spent. Leaning can be love."
"Maybe I was breaking down, but I also broke through."
"I still don’t ever want to let things go, but now I know that I can."
"The paradox was that my newfound self-reliance was a symptom of my utter reliance on him. I depended on his demand that I not depend. I leaned on not leaning on him. The irony was he left me anyway."
"I was ashamed that I needed him emotionally and existentially in ways he didn’t seem to need me."
"And I was ashamed of my willingness to settle for a love life in which my desire to twine like a vine was constantly thwarted by a man who was always carefully disentangling himself from my tendrils and tentacles."
"I was a leaning willow, and when my man could and did detach himself from me, I learned that leaning willows , unlike mighty oaks, are built to withstand quakes and storms. They can bend almost to the ground without breaking."
"Even our faults and flaws can become bearable when mediated through the eyes of others, since our closest friends can show us the awful sides of ourselves that we would never have seen, but in ways that sharpen us instead of wearing us away."
"“Codependence” is a beautiful word that could mean mutual support but instead means mutual harm."
"Leaning, or being leaned on, can make one feel luscious, melting, known, held, solid, suspended, steely, light. It can also make one feel used, worn out, weak, diminished, infantilized, guarded, sick, spent. Leaning can be love."
"Maybe I was breaking down, but I also broke through."
"I still don’t ever want to let things go, but now I know that I can."
October 27, 2019
What drew me to Briallen Hopper's collection was its overarching theme of a chosen or found family - a rejection of the dichotomous get-married-or-die-alone life template and an exploration of the romances that exist outside it. To place sole importance on the traditional romantic relationship seems a disservice to the potential that friendships have to be intimate and life-changing, and Hopper recounts many instances of friendships that have shaped her life, including caring for a friend with cancer and moving in with another who is at a very different place in life. Her essay "Moby Dick" is my favorite, a painful, eye-opening account of Hopper's ongoing fertility journey, and I appreciate her candor in talking openly about what it's like to try to have a baby outside the confines of couplehood. As less people are deciding to get married and more are choosing to stay single, I suspect this will be a widely referenced collection on platonic love in years to come.
December 6, 2023
disclaimer: i worked on this book
April 23, 2019
Challenging, thought-provoking & empathy-raising read for an old Catholic guy. Smart, crystal clear prose.
February 20, 2021
I think I just came into this book with different expectations than what was actually in here.
I was expecting a lot of essays diving into Hopper's embracing of spinster-hood and valuing friendship in a way that isn't often seem in American life. And to be fair, most of her essays were shaded by these concerns. However, she used them as a lens to talk about other media. While I enjoyed reading about Cheers and Cards-Against-Humanity style Moby Dick, I wanted more specific about Hopper's wrestling. Oh well.
I was expecting a lot of essays diving into Hopper's embracing of spinster-hood and valuing friendship in a way that isn't often seem in American life. And to be fair, most of her essays were shaded by these concerns. However, she used them as a lens to talk about other media. While I enjoyed reading about Cheers and Cards-Against-Humanity style Moby Dick, I wanted more specific about Hopper's wrestling. Oh well.
July 7, 2020
I enjoyed this collection of essays! Some were a little heavy and some were a little whiney, but for the most part I could really identify and I enjoyed her style.
August 18, 2021
The first essay 'Lean On : Declaration of Dependence' will forever stay with me. I resonate with it on a different celestial level.
There is another essay which talks about sibling relationships with the author and her brother in frame. Something about it is also cemented in my mind.
The second half of the book was pretty average, skimmed through most of it. However I'm glad I stumbled on something which gave me food for thought.
There is another essay which talks about sibling relationships with the author and her brother in frame. Something about it is also cemented in my mind.
The second half of the book was pretty average, skimmed through most of it. However I'm glad I stumbled on something which gave me food for thought.
April 14, 2019
I loved it so freakin much. Hopper writes with as much intelligence as the best (Sontag, Solnit, Didion), but also with a kind of light touch and personableness that’s sometimes lacking from the very smart but very formal famous essayists. The collection focuses on relationships that exist beyond romance: friends, sisters, roommates, caretakers. Hopper shows that these relationships are just as important as romantic love, and by giving more attention to them, you actually make the world a more empathetic place: “Rather than resting all my weight on one unreliable man, I began to spread myself out. I learned to practice mutual, broadly distributed leaning: to depend on care that was neither compulsory nor conditional, and on lavish, unrationed, unanticipated kindness.”
Also, I hadn’t heard of many of the books& movies examined in “Hard to Love,” but Hopper writes about them in a way that convinces me I need to watch/ read them immediately! The list includes two movies staring Bette Davis, “Now, Voyager” & “Of Human Bondage,” James Baldwin’s essay “The Devil Finds Work,” the TV show “Cheers,” the book series “Tales of the City,” Robin Wasserman’s “Girls on Fire,” Shirley Jackson’s memoirs “Life Among the Savages” & “Raising Demons,” and Grace Metalious’s “Peyton Place”
Also, I hadn’t heard of many of the books& movies examined in “Hard to Love,” but Hopper writes about them in a way that convinces me I need to watch/ read them immediately! The list includes two movies staring Bette Davis, “Now, Voyager” & “Of Human Bondage,” James Baldwin’s essay “The Devil Finds Work,” the TV show “Cheers,” the book series “Tales of the City,” Robin Wasserman’s “Girls on Fire,” Shirley Jackson’s memoirs “Life Among the Savages” & “Raising Demons,” and Grace Metalious’s “Peyton Place”
March 4, 2019
Full disclosure: I know the author, and I am mentioned in the acknowledgements (thanks Bri!). And let me tell you what an enormous relief it is that I am able to review this book after all. Because I decided a long time ago that I wouldn't review books by people I know if I don't love them (the books, I mean - although I suppose it often applies to the authors too). It's a little like writing recommendation letters for students (which I do frequently); unless I can honestly rave about them, it's not appropriate for me to be writing their recommendation, and it's better to leave it to somebody else better qualified to get that rave in. And then thank everything holy I read "Hard to Love" and completely and utterly adored it.
"Hard to Love" is a mix of essays written directly for the publication of this book, and texts published in various journals and magazines in the last decade. One of the standouts of the former variety is her essay on the TV show Cheers called "Everything You've Got." It's not your usual snarky pop culture-savvy breakdown of how and why and show appeals to us in a particular moment. Instead, it's a loving (but not uncritical!) engagement with a show that, through its heightened depiction of class in urban America, weirdly enough managed to say something profound about heterosexual romance. And vice versa. It's the essay that I think stands out in the collection as a showcase of just what a phenomenal writer we've got in Hopper.
But let's be honest. What readers will take from this book isn't what Hopper has to say about TV, hoarding, or Emerson, or Flannery O'Connor. It's the almost breathtaking honesty with which she chronicles her life experiences and weaves them in to her thoughts on TV, hoarding Emerson, and Flannery O'Connor - and so much more. It's not a perfect book, of course. I imagine those English-language readers who are not American in origin or current residence might feel the usual frustration at the lumping together of "life" experiences/problems (manifestations of religion, racism, classism and so on) and "modern North American" experiences. But it's a smart and sensitive enough book that unlike in many of the other countless instances in which one encounters this assumption, it's very hard to fault this one in particular, because it's just too darn good. And somehow the alchemy which shouldn't work does work - it really DOES matter to your dating life (while in grad school at least) if your prospective mate refuses to give up on the ideals of a douchebag like Ralph Waldo Emerson. It's not "academic" or "literary" - I mean it's both those, but it's also real life. That intertwinedness - of singing the praises of leaning on people (while subtly throwing an enormous amount of shade on Sheryl Sandberg's ludicrous "Lean In" concept while never once mentioning it or her by name), while talking about having to wear adult diapers of a certain brand name because of her recent surgery... it's the way Hopper makes those two things so interconnected in an organic and genuine way that's a deeply impressive feat. And it makes for a moving, wise, roller-coaster (of many kinds) read.
"Hard to Love" is a mix of essays written directly for the publication of this book, and texts published in various journals and magazines in the last decade. One of the standouts of the former variety is her essay on the TV show Cheers called "Everything You've Got." It's not your usual snarky pop culture-savvy breakdown of how and why and show appeals to us in a particular moment. Instead, it's a loving (but not uncritical!) engagement with a show that, through its heightened depiction of class in urban America, weirdly enough managed to say something profound about heterosexual romance. And vice versa. It's the essay that I think stands out in the collection as a showcase of just what a phenomenal writer we've got in Hopper.
But let's be honest. What readers will take from this book isn't what Hopper has to say about TV, hoarding, or Emerson, or Flannery O'Connor. It's the almost breathtaking honesty with which she chronicles her life experiences and weaves them in to her thoughts on TV, hoarding Emerson, and Flannery O'Connor - and so much more. It's not a perfect book, of course. I imagine those English-language readers who are not American in origin or current residence might feel the usual frustration at the lumping together of "life" experiences/problems (manifestations of religion, racism, classism and so on) and "modern North American" experiences. But it's a smart and sensitive enough book that unlike in many of the other countless instances in which one encounters this assumption, it's very hard to fault this one in particular, because it's just too darn good. And somehow the alchemy which shouldn't work does work - it really DOES matter to your dating life (while in grad school at least) if your prospective mate refuses to give up on the ideals of a douchebag like Ralph Waldo Emerson. It's not "academic" or "literary" - I mean it's both those, but it's also real life. That intertwinedness - of singing the praises of leaning on people (while subtly throwing an enormous amount of shade on Sheryl Sandberg's ludicrous "Lean In" concept while never once mentioning it or her by name), while talking about having to wear adult diapers of a certain brand name because of her recent surgery... it's the way Hopper makes those two things so interconnected in an organic and genuine way that's a deeply impressive feat. And it makes for a moving, wise, roller-coaster (of many kinds) read.
September 15, 2019
One of my take always from these essays was as follows: and forgive me please if I’m not precise in my recall - a female friend or associate of the author tells her about looking for a potential male to spend time with on a dating site. She tells her she and other women have learned to avoid men who list the following trifecta of favourite writers - R.W. Emerson, David Foster Wallace and Bukowski. If I remember correctly this was included in her essay on leaning on others. Men favoring these writers won’t take kindly to being leaned on or to leaning on women. I enjoyed some of the essays more than others which is to be expected. Hopper is clearly intelligent and writes in an engaging and persuasive style. For me, she felt so young.
May 18, 2019
3.5 stars-I enjoyed this book overall but it wasn't really what I went into it expecting or wanting (there's a LOT of TV show and book opinion/analysis pieces). Loved "On Spinsters" and "Moby-Dick"-the rest for me were mostly blandly interesting but not something I would have read if I'd known more of what I was getting into.
February 7, 2019
This book is beautiful, searing, and helped me to think about love and friendship in new ways. If you are a human who knows other humans, you should read it.
July 10, 2019
Love, love, love!!! 4.5 stars (more thoughts coming soon!)
May 24, 2019
An essay collection that's actually an essay collection (instead of a poorly organized memoir)! Loved the writing and breadth of topics.
May 24, 2019
There is a cadre of books that cut through one's life redefining it in two eras; the life before you read the book and the one after. This book is numbered among them.
It is not that it made me rethink my life or made my imagination drunk enough to entertain wild ideas of leaving my normal dreary corporate drudgery and pack up to Tibet to sniff flowers, nothing drastic but rather it was something subtle; a slow reorientation of my world view. A desire to look at life through a different prism and liking how the shades of life are refracted on a different spectrum.
Before I took a chance on this I had strong opinions towards books that peddled themselves as "a collection of essays." I deemed them to be products of authors not disciplined enough to churn out a book, who used the back door entry of one good article and terrible first drafts passed off as essays. How I came to hold this view? I do not know. Despite strong opinions there are always times we take chances and this book was one of those.
Briallen Hopper is a compact writer. She packs a lot in very small prose which served well for this format. She is the gold standard on essay writing [imo]. Her prose has its own cadence and washes down with a lyrical lilt that is just priceless, which made me feel like a failure when the best I can call this book is; honest. A too simple a word for this gem. I should wax lyrical about it, call it this and that, write bad poems about it and pretentious jeremiads on it but I will stick with honest. Hopper bared it all without being crass, she talked about movies and series, of frayed religious thoughts and hoarding, of this and that. I strongly recommend this and for Hopper, I wish her nothing but the very best that life has to offer and if she gets time, she should listen to Axwell's I got nothing but love for you to know my sentiments on her.
It is not that it made me rethink my life or made my imagination drunk enough to entertain wild ideas of leaving my normal dreary corporate drudgery and pack up to Tibet to sniff flowers, nothing drastic but rather it was something subtle; a slow reorientation of my world view. A desire to look at life through a different prism and liking how the shades of life are refracted on a different spectrum.
Before I took a chance on this I had strong opinions towards books that peddled themselves as "a collection of essays." I deemed them to be products of authors not disciplined enough to churn out a book, who used the back door entry of one good article and terrible first drafts passed off as essays. How I came to hold this view? I do not know. Despite strong opinions there are always times we take chances and this book was one of those.
Briallen Hopper is a compact writer. She packs a lot in very small prose which served well for this format. She is the gold standard on essay writing [imo]. Her prose has its own cadence and washes down with a lyrical lilt that is just priceless, which made me feel like a failure when the best I can call this book is; honest. A too simple a word for this gem. I should wax lyrical about it, call it this and that, write bad poems about it and pretentious jeremiads on it but I will stick with honest. Hopper bared it all without being crass, she talked about movies and series, of frayed religious thoughts and hoarding, of this and that. I strongly recommend this and for Hopper, I wish her nothing but the very best that life has to offer and if she gets time, she should listen to Axwell's I got nothing but love for you to know my sentiments on her.
July 22, 2019
As soon as I heard about this book and its premise, I knew that I absolutely needed to pick it up. And I was not disappointed at all. In this great collection, Hopper (a name that is so close to my own that I felt a special kinship with her right away) writes about all the other forms of love there are out there besides romantic love. I really appreciated that as someone who has often had to struggle with being single and the challenges that it presents. But Hopper also takes a look at other types of love such as love of writing and love of siblings and even writes a powerful essay about sperm donation and getting pregnant (one that I appreciated for its candor and openness). There's even an essay in here about the TV show Cheers, a show I watched when I was a kid but probably haven't sat down to watch in over 20 years.
I appreciated Hopper's candor and voice here. She has a great, easily accessible writing style. She doesn't come off as pretentious or too full of herself. And she gives us a lot to think about with these essays? Why is romantic love always portrayed as the most fulfilling? Why are our friends so often more important to us than our own family? Why is singleness always portrayed as sad and lonely when it is often anything but?
If I'm not giving this a full five stars, it is only because I did find some of the essays a bit dry and detached. Some of them didn't quite connect to the main theme and some of them just weren't as interesting. That's not a criticism, more of an observation. On the whole, I'm highly recommending this to anyone who is looking for a rather unique take on singledom, love, sex, romance and Cheers.
I appreciated Hopper's candor and voice here. She has a great, easily accessible writing style. She doesn't come off as pretentious or too full of herself. And she gives us a lot to think about with these essays? Why is romantic love always portrayed as the most fulfilling? Why are our friends so often more important to us than our own family? Why is singleness always portrayed as sad and lonely when it is often anything but?
If I'm not giving this a full five stars, it is only because I did find some of the essays a bit dry and detached. Some of them didn't quite connect to the main theme and some of them just weren't as interesting. That's not a criticism, more of an observation. On the whole, I'm highly recommending this to anyone who is looking for a rather unique take on singledom, love, sex, romance and Cheers.
May 22, 2019
Lean On stood out among the essays. I adored it. Others were less quotable; however, all taken together this book leaves me feeling like I know Briallen Hopper. She is a person I would be friends with. We would watch Golden Girls and eat baked goods and march for Women's Rights. We would talk about writing and reading, religion and philosophy. We'd cherish the good times, lament the bad ones. Even now, as I write this, I am routing for her re: Moby Dick. Maybe one day she will move to Syracuse and we will be neighbors. Briallen Hopper, won't you be my neighbor? :)
A Quote from Lean On:
"We know [Emerson's self-reliant] man...He's a high plains drifter, a gambler and a ghoster. He's a lone cowboy judging the world from under the brim of his hat...Emerson believes in selfmade men, but I experience myself as someone formed and sustained by others' love and patience, by student loans and stipends, by the kindness of strangers. Emerson thinks of people as independent individuals, like an orderly orchards of freestanding trees, but I see them as an overgrown tangle of undergrowth, mulch, mushrooms, and moss, or as an individual ocean of brinedrops. I believe we are all obviously a part of each other, elements of one ecosystem, members of one body, all of us at the mercy of capitalism, weather, genes, and fate. Independence, to me, is nothing but a dangerous delusion."
A Quote from Lean On:
"We know [Emerson's self-reliant] man...He's a high plains drifter, a gambler and a ghoster. He's a lone cowboy judging the world from under the brim of his hat...Emerson believes in selfmade men, but I experience myself as someone formed and sustained by others' love and patience, by student loans and stipends, by the kindness of strangers. Emerson thinks of people as independent individuals, like an orderly orchards of freestanding trees, but I see them as an overgrown tangle of undergrowth, mulch, mushrooms, and moss, or as an individual ocean of brinedrops. I believe we are all obviously a part of each other, elements of one ecosystem, members of one body, all of us at the mercy of capitalism, weather, genes, and fate. Independence, to me, is nothing but a dangerous delusion."
May 20, 2019
this author dominates. I'm so pleased to have discovered her. Will look forward to reading other work she puts out, and i'm officially envious of her students in "creative nonfiction" at Queens College. I withheld the 5th star only to (a) motivate her to keep publishing to achieve this goal, and (b) there were a couple duds in this collection IMO [far too deep a dive for my taste on what was cool about "Cheers" for instance].
But mostly great great stuff -- on grief, on relationships, on how she feels about trying to become a single mother, on friendships, sisters, academic life and lots more. Not that the topics are particularly unusual, but her writing and her eye for detail in what people do and say all spoke to me.
But mostly great great stuff -- on grief, on relationships, on how she feels about trying to become a single mother, on friendships, sisters, academic life and lots more. Not that the topics are particularly unusual, but her writing and her eye for detail in what people do and say all spoke to me.
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