Stunning and beautiful and often disturbing, especially the first section/chapter, which stayed with me for days, and the final one, which focuses on Stunning and beautiful and often disturbing, especially the first section/chapter, which stayed with me for days, and the final one, which focuses on Maggie O'Farrell's daughter, who has life-threatening-level allergies. The writing here is so, so good, in every way I can think of: at the sentence level, in terms of the risks it takes, the way it sees to clearly and movingly and sometimes shockingly into the human heart. Also, I love the structure - which isn't unique to this book, but seems to work especially beautifully here. Each chapter makes a luminous whole - and at the same time each builds and builds, sometimes referring back to earlier sections and illuminating ideas/events that were just briefly touched on before. The book as a whole feels, after this steady accrual, alive and full and nearly perfect....more
I found this book, luckily, at a great indie bookstore in West Philadelphia, and read it all in one sitting, on a ferry crossing Lake Michigan. DifficI found this book, luckily, at a great indie bookstore in West Philadelphia, and read it all in one sitting, on a ferry crossing Lake Michigan. Difficult to express how much I love it: the luminous clarity of the writing, the book's profound emotional life, the graceful illustrations (also made by the author), the hopefulness and broken-hearted-ness and deep humanity. I also realized I've read very, very few (any??) books about abortion from a male perspective - and I mean books that don't judge or take a political stance but take up the subject in such an intimate, real, and personal way. As other reviewers have written, this is a book about lovers and an abortion and a break-up... and about love in the largest sense, about illness, growing up/older, sorrow, and art. The fact that it is ultimately healing... or moving in that direction... does not diminish the deep sadness at the heart of the book, and yet the sadness itself is redemptive because it's so fully human and so beautifully rendered and shared. I recently read a Sarah Manguso piece in which she says people should write/make art in order to keep others from despair. This is a book to help you feel less alone....more
The honesty and subject matter of Hunger feel so important. I imagine - I hope - the book will change the way I think and feel and am in the world. OnThe honesty and subject matter of Hunger feel so important. I imagine - I hope - the book will change the way I think and feel and am in the world. One of my favorite sections appears at the very end: the chapter in which Roxane Gay details how much she's struggled, and is struggling, to accept her own body, and how that struggle has helped (and is helping) her to accept other bodies, other lives; in a beautifully understated way, she's describing the growth of her own compassion. I feel so strongly that's something art, at its best, can do for us: it can help us grow in compassion. I'm glad to have read Hunger for that reason (and for others too). Some reviewers have mentioned that the book is repetitive. That was my experience, too - occasionally, the repetition helped to deepen my understanding and felt sense of the book, but more often it didn't. Roxane Gay describes, several times, how difficult it was for her to write Hunger, and I wonder if the repetitiveness is a product of that difficulty. On the other hand, I admire what feel like the rough edges in the book: Gay says over and over that she isn't "healed" and that it isn't a book about magically overcoming trauma and becoming an entirely other (thinner) self. For the courage it must have taken to write the book and for what it shares and teaches: again, Hunger feels important....more
Brilliant and moving and so wide-ranging; another hard to categorize book that blends art criticism and memoir and philosophy. I couldn't stop readingBrilliant and moving and so wide-ranging; another hard to categorize book that blends art criticism and memoir and philosophy. I couldn't stop reading this book, and when I was done I wanted to read it all over again. It taught me - among other things - about artists and writers I'd never heard of and now want to read/learn about (e.g. David Wojnarowicz), and artists I'd known a little but now know much better (e.g. Henry Darger). I love the way Laing manages to be utterly self-revealing, bravely transparent, while never seeming trite or sorry for herself. And like H is for Hawk, this book is ultimately redemptive in a way that felt completely believable to me, very much about the power of art to shake us loose from ourselves and lift us into a better place....more
I'm fascinated by Kate Zambreno's work and read this book in about a day - strange, haunting, powerfully honest and forthright, and so moving. In an iI'm fascinated by Kate Zambreno's work and read this book in about a day - strange, haunting, powerfully honest and forthright, and so moving. In an interview I read, Zambreno says she is fascinated by failure, by texts that are messy, show their seams, don't (because they can't) reach a perfectly realized "finished" state. Maybe that is all books, but I love the way Zambreno embraces this ethic. Her work feels powerfully itself in a way that some people are purely themselves (sounds so simple, being oneself, and is so challenging in reality). As in other books I love, Zambreno blends art criticism/history with memoir and personal experience, but her voice is so recognizably and uniquely hers, as is the way the text zigzags and turns back on itself and moves in ways I would never expect. More in here about Henry Darger, who intrigues me. I loved this book as I loved Heroines, and will probably be ready to reread both soon....more
One of the bravest and most gorgeous books I've read this year, maybe ever. Really deserves six stars, only that's not possible.One of the bravest and most gorgeous books I've read this year, maybe ever. Really deserves six stars, only that's not possible....more
I don't know why it took me so long... 9 months... to finish this book, which I adored, and which isn't like anything else I've ever read. I don't knoI don't know why it took me so long... 9 months... to finish this book, which I adored, and which isn't like anything else I've ever read. I don't know that I have anything new to add to what reviewers have already written. It's beautiful, moving, harrowing, brilliant, strange, often disturbing, and ultimately redemptive. The descriptions of the English landscape and of hawking, and of T.H. White's life and relationship with his hawk, often gave me chills, and actually, I think this is why I read so slowly - I needed time to be with and absorb the language, feeling, images. Small side note: Helen Macdonald has (among other amazing qualities) an incredible vocabulary. There were more words in this book I had to look up than in anything else I've read recently. I love that....more
Very divided about this book, hence the 3 stars. On the one hand, gorgeous gorgeous prose: there were many sentences I read over and over. And the subVery divided about this book, hence the 3 stars. On the one hand, gorgeous gorgeous prose: there were many sentences I read over and over. And the subject matter--obsessive love--is conveyed with the sort of honesty that's humbling ("honesty" actually feels pretty pallid when applied to Elizabeth Smart, but I can't think of a word that means "beyond honesty").
On the other hand (and I realize this sort of criticism is like being confronted with a particular type of animal--say a horse--and whining that I wish it were a cat), I found the book's almost entirely internal focus, its total lack of description of Smart's lover, maddening. I wanted to believe in her love for him... and yet the two or three things the reader's able to discern about him make him sound not only not loveable, but not even particularly likeable. Which makes the obsessiveness of Smart's feelings for him hard to get behind. I was torn between feeling tremendous empathy for her, and wanting to reach into the book and shake her....more
My second Diana Athill memoir, which I loved just as much as the first I read. She has the incredible gift (like two of my favorite fiction writers, TMy second Diana Athill memoir, which I loved just as much as the first I read. She has the incredible gift (like two of my favorite fiction writers, Tessa Hadley and Alice Mattison) of pinpointing, beautifully, the most subtle and deeply buried human emotions, of bringing them to the surface where they shimmer. This is one of those books that, although the circumstances it describes are completely different from my own, managed to make me feel less alone, to feel companioned and inspired. I think that's due not only to Athill's intelligence and insight but to her incredible honesty--about family, love, sex, and work. I found so much of this book moving, so it's almost impossible to pick out a single section I loved more than the others... but her writing about how she became a writer, rather late in life, and what writing means to her, will stay with me for a long time....more
I found this such a brave and moving book. Brave because the subject--Cyndi Lee's unhappy and critical relationship with her body--isn't one yoga teacI found this such a brave and moving book. Brave because the subject--Cyndi Lee's unhappy and critical relationship with her body--isn't one yoga teachers, especially famous yoga teachers, are "supposed" to have (and Lee acknowledges this). So, to not only admit to this kind of self-hatred, but to actually write a whole (smart, funny, thoughtful, compassionate) book about it, strikes me as incredibly courageous. The idea that we can't really love other people or help them to be happy unless we love ourselves in some basic ways is a cliche, but it's also true. And Lee's memoir is a study in self-compassion that ripples outward to her yoga students and her readers, too....more
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