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robynryle's review against another edition
5.0
Compelling and beautiful. Full of the kind of sentences you want to underline, write down on a piece of paper and carry around in your pocket. Sad but hopeful. One of my favorite essays is the syllabus, because as a teacher I know, this is really all we ever do--compose syllabi that tell the story of our lives in a thinly disguised list of books and assignments.
kathrichards's review against another edition
5.0
This book is amazing, emotional, insightful, I loved every essay.
sonyahu's review against another edition
5.0
Talbot writes, "Fiction and history are neighbors. The stories we tell about our own histories might as well be fiction--for what we tell, what we don't." This book is about being left and then leaving--via a Ford Escape and heartbreak and relocations and glasses of wine. It is about the ways a woman navigates and makes space in her own life for creation, and above all this book is about the varied and shifting stories we tell ourselves. I always find the urgency and specificity of Jill Talbot's writing transfixing, and this book is no exception. Talbot's narration shifts between third and first person, crossing state lines and swirling around the pairing of a mother and a daughter to create a specific and compelling portrait of single motherhood without child support--a huge challenge that Talbot meets gamely. The essays here play with form and point of view, and come as a wine list, a syllabus, a court transcript, and all dazzle with their intensity.
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