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A review by textpublishing
Desire by Jessie Cole
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