A review by shaguftap
Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison

emotional reflective slow-paced

3.5

This meditation on divorce, creativity, writing/art, motherhood and attachment/love reminded me so much of Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful, but  I only realized when I finished it that Maggie Smith is the very first testimonial on the back of the book. It’s gorgeously written on a sentence and paragraph level but after reading “Unearthing” I now want every memoir to place itself in a broader context.  It did make me think a lot about labour and art and when I read her descriptions of taking her baby everyday to the Brooklyn Museum, it made me wish that Vancouver, like Chicago or New York or other big cities had galleries you could visit everyday and nourish yourself. It also made me think about the heartbreak and mess of relationships and the nourishment of female friendship and mother daughter loves. 
I bought this in SFO in April on the recommendation of someone who now slips my mind, and I’m glad I did - she really can write beautifully, and there are sentences in here and phrases that will stay with me ( one example - she describes going swimming and her hair sticking together like clumps of salted pasta) and that is a perfect description) but as a work overall I’m not sure what to take from this. 3.5-4 stars.