Some books are so unremittingly personal that I am driven to distraction. This collection of achingly intimate essays—not quite chronological, in broken narrative, shifting between past and present tense—are addressed to “you” (me?!), which unnerved my inner WASP. TMI, dear author! Put a tourniquet on this open vein, you’re going to die and stain the carpet. Things are intense from page FOUR: The ugly truth is that I lost my son Isadore in court. The Hague Convention. The ugly of that truth is that I […]
A sin committed; a prayer answered
This book is absolutely the real deal. This is incredibly strong and beautifully written memoir. And unlike other recent ones I have read, seems to have fully considered and engaged with the memoir, as a form, is, and what the particularly story and writing should encapsulate. This is thoughtful, painful, pained, and completely realized. Mailhot, as you would discover reading this, is a First Nations woman from Canada who married when she was sixteen, had a child early, lost that child to custody hearings (while […]