Despite having read it before January was even over, I have a strong suspicion that Notes to Self might turn out to be my book of the year. Not since Ariel Levy’s The Rules Do Not Apply, which it reminded me of in many ways, have I highlighted so many passages or been so inspired to return to my own writing projects. I hope Emily Pine goes on to write and publish more work in this vein.

A very honest and frank collection of essays covering topics that have been largely avoided by mainstream writers. Pine will hopefully write and release more in her career as I feel that many books like these are not as relatable and come from a place of privilege yet Pine’s experiences strike a chord with myself and others that I’ve spoken to about the collection.

Pine's memoirs were certainly interesting and though-provoking. Many of the stories have stayed with me long after I have finished reading. It's true what they say, 'the wounds that are made when we're young tend to linger'.

While I liked the underlying messages, I couldn't emphasise with the author. While Pine did a brilliant job at highlighting peoples internalised conflicting struggles (I want to be happy for you : jealousy), it felt more of a cathartic release for her; an angry, bitter rant, not a raw and honest account of painful life situations (are these topics still taboo now days, or is it a generation thing?).

A series of essays, telling of one woman’s life. Initially I wasn’t keen, even considered giving up on the book, but I’m glad I didn’t - I was glued to the unfolding stories, some of which made me gasp aloud in shock..and others made me cry.
They also made me think...a lot. Which is what I imagine Ms Pine wanted.

Phenomenal. There wasn't a weak essay in this debut collection from Irish author Emilie Pine. The subject matter is incredibly personal - her parents' separation, her father's alcoholism, her miscarriage, her own relationship with her body, among others - and each essay is revelatory in some way. I found myself relating closely to some of her experiences, too, and found it refreshing to read another person's writing on things I didn't acknowledge I felt myself (until I saw it written down). I really can't recommend this highly enough.

Both stunningly relateable and remarkably unique all at once, this essay collection is a joy. In her stories about her life, Pine manages to speak for all women, telling us why she's angry, why she won't apologise for herself anymore, and why she respects herself when others won't. It's glorious and so we'll written.

Emilie Pine's essays are a heart-wrenching look into family, womanhood, career and addiction. I found a couple of the chapters really hit home with my own experiences. Whether you've been though drugs, doubt, depression or divorce, these essays will speak to you.

To be honest I'm not quite sure how to review this as it's quite different from anything I've read before. It reads (to me) like a series of blog and diary entries. That's not a bad thing in itself I just had to get used to the structure as I read it. Indeed at times the structure felt a bit disjointed, even fractured (I'm reading a pre release copy so the structure may change upon publication). Again though, having thought more about it, the slightly fractured structure adds to the sense of the writer delving into her psyche to retrieve memories, find patterns and construct narratives from her life experiences in order to understand and grow. It's not the kind of book you can simply finish and move on to another. I had to stop and reflect on what I'd read before picking up another book. It's great if a book does that, it means it's impacted.

It's compulsive but not easy reading. Pine deals with caring for an alcoholic father, her parents broken relationship, coming to terms with childlessness, her experience of her period, rape (and the realisation she *had* been raped) and coming to the point where she decided it was right to actually use that word in a public setting, as well as issues regarding the suppression of the female voice. A poignant moment for me was her description of giving a lecture where a questioning Chair of Faculty calls her "cute" apparently unable to reconcile this with her talking about rape. This effectively downgrades her academic validity, causing her to sidestep the remark, thus silencing her. She writes, "The stinging irony, of course, was that my entire talk was about the ways that women are intimidated into silence." I did wonder if maybe she should have replied to his "cute" comment by saying, "Well at least I don't look like a dick." But that would be bad! #MyBad

There is also a wonderfully descriptive and acutely vulnerable section on the process of writing, "These pages cover a period of about eight years. They contain many events and emotions that I have never told to anyone before, or even admitted to myself. The experience of writing them out has been very painful. That I cannot, or have not, avoided this pain by choosing not to write the story is due to one simple reason: the urge to write this feels not only dangerous and fearful and shameful, but necessary. I write this now to reclaim those parts of me that for so long I thoroughly denied. I write it to unlock the code of silence that I kept for so many years. I write it so that I can, at last, feel present in my own life. I write it because it is the most powerful thing I can think of to do."

Pine writes with brutal honesty and it's this very brutality in the honesty that makes it such a devastatingly effective read. I'm a (spoiler warning!) man...and while I am aware of the barriers and prejudices women face in society and am aware of accusations of misogyny against many men and the 'patriarchal' nature of sections of society, this book was still a major eye opener to me. I have read plenty of 'honest' books but rarely such incisive honesty. There is an honesty which takes you below the surface of a person's thoughts and outlook and lets you reflect in a relatively safe manner. Then there is the unnerving honesty which catapults you into the private chamber of a person's inner world like a cannonball ripping through a spider's web and you're suddenly in a world you thought you knew but now, face to face with someone else's reality through their own raw and uncompromising eyes/words, you realise how weak your knowledge actually was. Pine's honesty is the latter.

In one part of the book Pine writes, "Famously, the trick to good writing is bleeding onto the page." Pine is using her own uniquely feminine experience of "this period blood, this pregnancy blood, this miscarriage blood" to metaphorically bleed words onto the page. Yet when I read those words just quoted it dawned on me that in all my own masculine efforts at writing perhaps this is what has been missing. I haven't been bleeding onto the page, or allowing myself to. Thank you to Emilie Pine for this moment of revelation.

I need to reiterate there is pain in this book. I had the impression as I read that I was receiving privileged viewing into someone else's journey, their processing of their life experience and their unwillingness to compromise on what they write. Nothing is hidden, nothing deemed too sensitive to reveal. Indeed, you get the feeling that the timescale of an internal official secrets act has now passed and the material ready for public consumption and that's a very good thing. It's an enlightening feminist reveal and I hope it has been cathartic to Pine herself and her family. I could be completely wrong but I also sense there is perhaps more to come, perhaps after more processing has been achieved (but I've been wrong in the past!).

Although I've read it now I shall purchase a copy as it's one of those books I'd want to revisit after having processed what I've read once. I rarely re-read books but I think this one will reward a return journey and at about 180 pages it's not intimidatingly long. There are parts where joy bursts onto the page that I want to re-experience such as collecting her nephew from creche, "He has just learned to wave. The first time he waved back at me, I nearly exploded with sudden joy. I am, you see, very warm and cuddly, despite what you may have heard. I smile and wave and he smiles and waves. And there it is, The love." Highly recommended.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books for ARC and thank to Emilie Pine for writing it.

This is a book of 6 essays about life as a woman, a daughter, wife and sister and I think we will all identify with several of the thoughts and comments. Her first account of her fathers alcoholism and the frustrations of dealing with him and the Greek hospital he was taken to just made me want to cry. Also the writings on the wanting to become pregnant were heart breaking and will resonate with so many readers. Great writing with much feeling and a book that makes you think about the bigger picture of life from puberty and to wonder how we cope with what life has in store for us all.

Thanks to Penguin Books UK and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

I actually finished this book a few weeks ago but felt I needed some time to ruminate about it before writing my review. This book deals with some really tough subjects and issues that have also affected me. It’s raw, unflinchingly honest and personal and I think many other women will feel the same affinity with the author whilst reading it.

In one of the essays the author details her struggles with infertility and her journey to try and come to terms with it. This is not one of those infuriating newspaper articles about a woman who stopped worrying about getting pregnant and magically did so. Pine’s experience of miscarriage mirrored my own so perfectly it brought feelings to the surface that I thought had been long buried. The loss suffered by her sister was desperately tragic and heartbreaking and made for very tough reading.

In the essays that make up the book Pine explores themes including addiction, fetal rights in Ireland, rape, body hair, poverty, weight, adolescence, feminism and loneliness.

Some quotes that really stuck out for me were:

“Perhaps the most corrosive aspect of a lonely life is not the time spent alone, but the time spent in a crowd, feeling left out.”

I feel like this is basically my entire experience of being distilled into one sentence.

Also:

“I am tired of being a feminist. I am tired of it being women’s responsibility to identify and tackle and fix sexism. I am tired of it being so necessary and so difficult. And I am tired of my own acts of internalising, tired of my complicity, tired of playing the game.”

Don’t we all feel this way? Sometimes it’s just so exhausting to keep fighting against the bullshit.

There were little anecdotes that really hit home for me e.g. how girls at school never ate the free sandwiches yet the boys did. As someone who has ran hundreds of workshops with free sandwiches provided for lunch, I couldn’t help but have a wry laugh at this. Grown women still don’t eat the sandwiches by the way.

I’m genuinely surprised at some of the other reviews I have read of this book criticising the author’s behaviour as a teen and her experiences of poverty. I can only guess some people have forgotten how utterly awful and lost some teens feel.

There’s a lot to unpack here and I won’t say it’s an easy book to read because for me it certainly wasn’t. I got a lot out of reading it though, and there are messages I can take from it into my teaching. I’ll be asking my classes what they would do if they weren’t afraid. What risks would they take? How can they feel the confidence to speak out against the things that have been done to them?

A moving, thoughtful series of essays which I highly recommend.

I read this following Deborah Levy's recommendation in one of those end of year lists. Emilie Pine is an Irish academic whose 'Notes to Self: Essays' (definitely not notes and maybe not really even essays) its made of six autobiographical narratives. These essays appear to be brutally forthright and honest, although I would have liked a bit more reflection on the necessary limits and artificiality of this, especially given the author's academic background. They didn't make me cry, as Anne Enright suggested they would in a blurb, but I wasn't far away a did a few times. If you think that sounds like a good thing, this may be a book for you.

The first essay, Notes on Intemperance, I liked the most, as it's a very sharp account, both agonising and funny, of how difficult it was to try to help her seriously ill father to get better. The other essays look at her attempts to have a baby, her parents' divorce, puberty, her troubled adolescence, and her academic career. There are some interesting insights into the sexism of academia and the whole issue of needing to be 'likeable' to get on (the whole book could be read as an exploration of this), and vivid accounts of the difficulties of getting through your teenage years. Well worth your time.

I feel there's very little left to be said about this book. It's an excellent read and I could identify with far too much of what she's written. Perhaps it's like one of those letters you are recommended to write to your younger self, explaining why things happened the way they did. There are many reasons to read this book, not least of which is how well it is written.

One of the best books I've read in 2018, Emilie Pine perfectly explores family dynamics, the impact of alcoholism and the issues women face in a modern world

From the cover and title, this was not at all what I expected and for a moment I thought I'd downloaded the wrong book. But having said that, this was a raw and powerful read and full of honesty. Very well written and one I'd recommend - although I think the cover and title are misleading and don't do the book justice.

I’m conflicted about this book. On one hand, Pine touches on some difficult subjects with intelligence. On the other, the warmth, gentle humour and emotional honesty I personally want to see when someone opens up in so personal a way on subjects that affect many of us, seemed to be lacking. I understand your viewpoint on this collection of essays will depend on the difficulties you’ve conquered or struggle with in your own life, and I do embrace that suffering is like air – whether you have a little or a lot of it, it still fills all the space available. That said, there was a coldness here that felt at times calculating. Perhaps it’s me projecting my own opinions and experiences but I don’t really recommend this one, well written as it is.

Absolute admiration for Emilie Pine for bringing forth the reality of life for some people and the pain you can feel through this. This may not flow well at times but you are kept involved through out.

Truthful raw and completely compelling I loved this ordinary memoir of a young girls search for acceptance. Touching maternity, rape, infertility and alcoholism. A must read.

This book wasn't what I expected at all, and I was wondering during the first chapter whether I would continue to read it. But I did and I am so glad I continued. I couldn't put it down (after I got past the first section).
Emilie (There is no Y!) explains the impact of her life as a young woman growing up with an alcoholic father and living as a single parent family in Ireland then London. It is basically an autobiographical collection of essays, and the author opens her heart on the page. Her story is shocking in places, but insightful and full of reflections that most woman could relate to..
Clearly therapeutic for the author, the book led me to reflect on much of my own life, particularly regarding the female body (it is brilliantly detailed) and on what it is to be a professional woman today and how far we still have to go.
Thank you to #NetGalley and to Emilie Pine for giving me the opportunity to read #NotesToSelf
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In this her debut work of non-fiction, part memoire, part treatise and part debate, Emily Pine writes a series of longer essays about women in various situations in modern life. It is entirely from her own point of view although other arguments are sometimes put forward that may be the other side of the story. I’m not entirely sure this was the best way to tackle her chosen subjects, but that in itself is up for debate. I certainly didn’t like the non chronological nature of the way she chose to order her ‘Notes’, which were anything but notes anyway.
The book is split into various subjects and there is no doubt at all about Emilie’s writing ability. She is talented and passionate, knowledgeable and persuasive in her subjects, although I found the writing was uneven throughout the content of this book. I really enjoyed the ‘Notes on Intemperance’ and ‘From The Baby Years’ which I found very poignant and which filled me with compassion, enjoying reading the content very much. These two ‘essays’ took up over half of the book. I cared less for ‘Notes on Bleeding & Other Crimes’ and ‘Something about Me’, which I found very disturbing, challenging and thought provoking. The final part of the book ‘This Is Not An Exam’ was much lighter and filled with humour and an overview of Emilie’s professional life. It also gave a very good outline about her personality, work ethic and the way she perceives that she became her ‘true self’, despite the challenges and setbacks in her life journey. I would have liked being her pupil because she seems to be a great motivator and mentor. She understood the frustration of not having a voice and of the importance of unveiling the less savoury subjects and talking about them.
In her debut she tackles the taboos in life, violence, grief, uncertainty, mental health, alcoholism, abuse, joy, love and relationships (and even more) absolutely straight on, writing with honesty and with a keen eye on truthfulness and transparency. I received a complimentary copy of this novel from publisher Penguin through my membership of NetGalley. These are my own honest and well considered opinions.

Compelling, sometimes heart-breaking, this reads like a novel and is all the more powerful for it. Deserves to be read far and wide, across all ages. I will definitely recommend this to friends and family.