This memoir pairs the writer's trials and joys of motherhood with her research into the Irish tradition of "keening," an oral literary form of verses created and handed down by women. "This is a female text," she writes early in the book, and then goes on to explore the implications of living with and embracing female texts, even as she tries to uncover details about the life of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, composer of a famous keen whose own history has all but been erased. This book is thoughtful and lyrical and even gripping, but what stayed with me most is writer's fierce love for the artists who came before her, on whose shoulders she stands.
'ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THIS DREADFUL YEAR' - SUNDAY TIMES
A true original. In this stunningly unusual prose debut, Doireann Ni Ghriofa sculpts essay and autofiction to explore inner life and the deep connection felt between two writers centuries apart.
In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem. In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with its parallels with her own life, and sets out to track down the rest of the story.…
This memoir comes alive in the way it combines medical research, the struggles of living with a chronic heart condition, and the writer's curiosity about the small machine implanted in her chest to keep her alive.
What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator.
In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisible reverberating effects of our medical system, Standefer recounts the astonishing true story of the rare diagnosis that upended her rugged life in the mountains of Wyoming and sent her tumbling into a fraught maze of cardiology units, dramatic surgeries, and slow, painful recoveries. As her life increasingly comes to revolve around the internal defibrillator freshly…
This novel tackles the serious topic of perimenopause in a way that feels both deeply human and hilariously absurd. It captures the weird contradictions of middle age with an optimism that made me want to stay curious about life at every stage.
The New York Times bestselling author returns with an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and surprising novel about a woman upending her life
“A frank novel about a midlife awakening, which is funnier and more boldly human than you ever quite expect….the bravery of All Fours is nothing short of riveting.”—Vogue
“A novel that presses into that tender bruise about the anxiety of aging, of what it means to have a female body that is aging, and wanting the freedom to live a fuller life…Deeply funny and achingly true.” —LA Times
Against the starkly beautiful backdrop of Anchorage, Alaska, where the author grew up, Marin Sardy weaves a fearless account of the shapeless thief—the schizophrenia—that kept her mother immersed in a world of private delusion and later manifested in her brother, ultimately claiming his life. Composed of exquisite, self-contained chapters that take us through three generations of this adventurous, artistic, and often haunted family, The Edge of Every Day draws in topics from neuroscience and evolution to mythology and art rock to shape its brilliant inquiry into how the mind works. In the process, Sardy casts new light on the treatment of the mentally ill in our society. Through it all runs her blazing compassion and relentless curiosity, as her meditations takes us to the very edge of love and loss—and invite us to look at what comes after.
