Scan barcode
textpublishing's review
The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of Desire
‘Jessie Cole is peerless in Australian letters; for me, she is the master chronicler of hidden psychic spaces. Her exquisite new memoir compels, startles and affirms the arterial centre that is desire.’
Ellena Savage
‘A gorgeous journey of a writer seeking out the inaccessible part of herself, of those she loves, and who love her back, and of the forest that holds them all together. Desire is a book of intellectual and emotional depth, exploring the flesh and nerves and sinew — as a mother, a lover, a friend and soothsayer. A tender joy of a book, about life and death, and of all the great pulls in between. Raw and fascinating writing that shimmers with truth and beauty at once. A confession, a lament, a celebration — I cannot recommend this enough.’
Tara June Winch
‘Luminous with honesty. Revelatory.’
Nikki Gemmell
'Jessie Cole is a delight. I don't know how she does it. She drags the gnarliest anchors from the heaviest depths and throws light on the hardest of places — her prose shimmers with warmth and breathtaking honesty. Desire is about the mystery of our bodies, how the wiring can get crossed, connections lost and one woman's delicate unstitching to find herself.’
Anna Krien
'A love story about one woman’s efforts to escape the clutches of trauma on her own terms.’
Readings
'Written in skilful fragmentary narrative, this sensory experience of self-and-world is tender, vulnerable, brave and raw...Desire: A Reckoning is deep life-poetry, thrumming with vitality and unpretentious symbolism. Masterfully patchworked moments pull the reader’s consciousness through a world of poignant aching and vanishing safety nets in this relevant reflection on self-embodiment. This book will appeal to lovers who have suffered through the exquisite terror of wanting, and will resonate with anyone who has ever sidestepped a rug to avoid having it ripped out from under them.’
ArtsHub
‘Desire is propulsive, honest and tender; it will hurl you back to your own worst heartaches, whether you want to revisit them or not.’
Guardian
‘[Jessie Cole] writes with a simultaneous tenderness and directness which places difficult emotions centre on the page, and forces the reader to confront the complexity of our inner lives head on… Cole’s sheer command of language captures your attention so well that pages virtually fly past. I devoured this book from the first page, completely entranced.’
Zoya Patel, Canberra Times
‘[A] book that pours itself on to the page: the warm, impulsive imprint of a brain in the throes of longing...Cole writes with brutal honesty about the links we are prone to make between sex and self-worth.’
Guardian
‘[Jessie Cole] mines the delirium of her heart—replaying scenes of painful, emotive rumination on the page…[Her] writing is so elemental, you will find yourself unsealed by her evocations…Cole seems to have performed the ultimate act of love in writing this book…she has turned that love into a work of art.’
Jessie Tu, SMH/Age
‘Desire sketches a life’s spaces and textures…Cole writes about [the body] with a direct and curious gaze.’
Felicity Plunkett, Saturday Paper
‘[An] intricately observed, forensically honest examination of the inherent contradictions and emotional high-wire act of romantic relationships… Like most good memoirists—and Cole is an excellent one—her reflections are truly brave…and generous.’
Jo Case, InDaily
‘[I]ntimate, lyrical…[and] rich with vivid detail.’
West Australian
‘A remarkably contemporary memoir…Desire is a powerful, tender book of loss and longing, attempting to grapple with both inner pain and external tragedy. It’s a vulnerable work that moved me to tears more than once. But despite it all, there are moments of hope, even at the end.’
Lisa Featherstone, Conversation
‘Some books you rip through as if your life is going to end tomorrow. That’s how I felt about Jessie Cole’s remarkable memoir Desire: A reckoning. I read it in one visceral session. Reckoning is the perfect subtitle: both a noun and a verb, an account and an action. This raw, pulsating, liquid-hot book is written in real time, as Cole evaluates and calculates the costs of her present affair with an older man. At the same time as her body twitches and her anxieties lurch, both onto her lover and onto the page, Cole is forced to tally the price paid for living in a forest, on a flood plain, in the age of anthropogenic climate change. The feelings are big, the ideas are big, the effect is lush and generous and unsparing.’
Clare Wright, Australian Book Review
‘Jessie Cole is peerless in Australian letters; for me, she is the master chronicler of hidden psychic spaces. Her exquisite new memoir compels, startles and affirms the arterial centre that is desire.’
Ellena Savage
‘A gorgeous journey of a writer seeking out the inaccessible part of herself, of those she loves, and who love her back, and of the forest that holds them all together. Desire is a book of intellectual and emotional depth, exploring the flesh and nerves and sinew — as a mother, a lover, a friend and soothsayer. A tender joy of a book, about life and death, and of all the great pulls in between. Raw and fascinating writing that shimmers with truth and beauty at once. A confession, a lament, a celebration — I cannot recommend this enough.’
Tara June Winch
‘Luminous with honesty. Revelatory.’
Nikki Gemmell
'Jessie Cole is a delight. I don't know how she does it. She drags the gnarliest anchors from the heaviest depths and throws light on the hardest of places — her prose shimmers with warmth and breathtaking honesty. Desire is about the mystery of our bodies, how the wiring can get crossed, connections lost and one woman's delicate unstitching to find herself.’
Anna Krien
'A love story about one woman’s efforts to escape the clutches of trauma on her own terms.’
Readings
'Written in skilful fragmentary narrative, this sensory experience of self-and-world is tender, vulnerable, brave and raw...Desire: A Reckoning is deep life-poetry, thrumming with vitality and unpretentious symbolism. Masterfully patchworked moments pull the reader’s consciousness through a world of poignant aching and vanishing safety nets in this relevant reflection on self-embodiment. This book will appeal to lovers who have suffered through the exquisite terror of wanting, and will resonate with anyone who has ever sidestepped a rug to avoid having it ripped out from under them.’
ArtsHub
‘Desire is propulsive, honest and tender; it will hurl you back to your own worst heartaches, whether you want to revisit them or not.’
Guardian
‘[Jessie Cole] writes with a simultaneous tenderness and directness which places difficult emotions centre on the page, and forces the reader to confront the complexity of our inner lives head on… Cole’s sheer command of language captures your attention so well that pages virtually fly past. I devoured this book from the first page, completely entranced.’
Zoya Patel, Canberra Times
‘[A] book that pours itself on to the page: the warm, impulsive imprint of a brain in the throes of longing...Cole writes with brutal honesty about the links we are prone to make between sex and self-worth.’
Guardian
‘[Jessie Cole] mines the delirium of her heart—replaying scenes of painful, emotive rumination on the page…[Her] writing is so elemental, you will find yourself unsealed by her evocations…Cole seems to have performed the ultimate act of love in writing this book…she has turned that love into a work of art.’
Jessie Tu, SMH/Age
‘Desire sketches a life’s spaces and textures…Cole writes about [the body] with a direct and curious gaze.’
Felicity Plunkett, Saturday Paper
‘[An] intricately observed, forensically honest examination of the inherent contradictions and emotional high-wire act of romantic relationships… Like most good memoirists—and Cole is an excellent one—her reflections are truly brave…and generous.’
Jo Case, InDaily
‘[I]ntimate, lyrical…[and] rich with vivid detail.’
West Australian
‘A remarkably contemporary memoir…Desire is a powerful, tender book of loss and longing, attempting to grapple with both inner pain and external tragedy. It’s a vulnerable work that moved me to tears more than once. But despite it all, there are moments of hope, even at the end.’
Lisa Featherstone, Conversation
‘Some books you rip through as if your life is going to end tomorrow. That’s how I felt about Jessie Cole’s remarkable memoir Desire: A reckoning. I read it in one visceral session. Reckoning is the perfect subtitle: both a noun and a verb, an account and an action. This raw, pulsating, liquid-hot book is written in real time, as Cole evaluates and calculates the costs of her present affair with an older man. At the same time as her body twitches and her anxieties lurch, both onto her lover and onto the page, Cole is forced to tally the price paid for living in a forest, on a flood plain, in the age of anthropogenic climate change. The feelings are big, the ideas are big, the effect is lush and generous and unsparing.’
Clare Wright, Australian Book Review
jaclyn_sixminutesforme's review
5.0
Desire could just have appropriately been titled Trust… this fragmentary narrative memoir felt as much about “skin hunger” and the ebbs of intimate desire as it was about the machinations of relationships as an exercise in vulnerability of the heart and soul. The laying of everything on the line without any guarantee of reciprocity. The exposure and the (perceived) shame, the rejection of unrequited love.
I loved how much this memoir became entangled with nature writing when it hit its most profound strides - the complex forest environment the author inhabits while writing this read like a foil for the turmoils and soul-searching she embarks on throughout her time with the man she refers to interchangeably as her lover, the older man. The natural disasters, the loss of pets, the way she connects with waterways and solitude as the pandemic creeps into the timeframe. That it was a memoir written in real time as it was experienced completely translated into the page for me - there’s a rawness, an unfiltered palpability that felt unedited (a no-holds barred vibe, rather than any judgment on the writing process - not sure I’m articulating this well, sorry!)
This was truly exquisite writing, and I can’t thank @whatkissreads for putting it on my radar. I can’t recommend it enough, and the glowing endorsement by @tara_june_winch should 100% convince you to check this out!
I loved how much this memoir became entangled with nature writing when it hit its most profound strides - the complex forest environment the author inhabits while writing this read like a foil for the turmoils and soul-searching she embarks on throughout her time with the man she refers to interchangeably as her lover, the older man. The natural disasters, the loss of pets, the way she connects with waterways and solitude as the pandemic creeps into the timeframe. That it was a memoir written in real time as it was experienced completely translated into the page for me - there’s a rawness, an unfiltered palpability that felt unedited (a no-holds barred vibe, rather than any judgment on the writing process - not sure I’m articulating this well, sorry!)
This was truly exquisite writing, and I can’t thank @whatkissreads for putting it on my radar. I can’t recommend it enough, and the glowing endorsement by @tara_june_winch should 100% convince you to check this out!
sarahrose14's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual assault, Death of parent, Mental illness, Suicide, Grief, Sexual content, Pregnancy, Death, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Minor: Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, and Animal death
kyliemaslen's review
4.0
a beautiful exploration of the ways in which trauma and grief intersect with desire/love/relationships/self-worth through a personal narrative.
theveryhungrythesaurus's review
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
sad
fast-paced
5.0
wtb_michael's review
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Cole is such a brilliantly skillful writer, picking over her own emotions and traumas here with bravery and curiosity