I was drawn A woman, A plan, An outline of a man after reading it's blurb and as someone who takes intrest in reading essays on feminism and the #MeToo movement I felt it would enjoy it. I found the book easy to get into and Kasbeer's writting style leaves you wanting to find out more.

I found a few essay more moving and touching but overall I enjoyed reading them all. It was intresting finding out about different area of Kasbeer's life and it helped give a better understanding of her.

I would recommend reading A Woman, A Plan, an Outline of a Man.

I received a review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

An excellent and sometimes really hard read on Sarah Kasbeer life events. It is a collection of short stories, therefore some events come across as repetitive, yet her openness about trauma and her life events is really to be appreciated.

First and foremost, Kasbeer is an excellent writer and I appreciate her candour and honesty in these essays. It's no easy thing to write about your life in such a raw and open way. The essays in this collection which stood out are, not coincidentally, the ones in which Kasbeer writes about the parts of her life that have wounded her most grievously. 'Lovers' in particular was a really excellent essay about recovering from trauma, and I also really enjoyed 'On the Edge of Seventeen'. 'One Man's Trash' was great, too; I loved seeing behind the glamorous veil of the world of the fashion magazines, a la Ugly Betty. Those were the standouts, in my opinion, and not just because they're topics that I have the most interest in. I also really enjoyed Kasbeer's turn of phrase in general, and found myself highlighting several lines in each essay because I loved her use of language. I haven't read her work before, but this book has definitely convinced me that I ought to.

I did feel like a lot of the essays sort of just fizzled out; they seemed to be building up to a point, and then just stopped. There also didn't seem to be an overarching theme, with some essays delving into the nuance of trauma and recovery, and others just meandering around Kasbeer's life. I wonder if this is because they were edited from their original publication, or because they're not designed to work together cohesively as a collection.

I read an ARC so I don't know if this was corrected in later editions, but Kasbeer also has a tendency to use classical allusions but get them a bit wrong - she references the myth of Apollo and Daphne as recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses and claims that Eros is the Roman version of Cupid at one point (it's actually the other way round, sort of, insofar as Roman gods aren't really 'versions' of the Greek gods at all, but Eros is very much Greek.) She also makes reference to Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium in a way that doesn't really engage with the actual meaning and mode of the text, and also confuses the roles of eros and philia. I do happen to be a classicist so I have a bit of a sore spot for people misusing classical allusions; it tends to be done in an attempt to look very clever and to add weight to a text, but it comes across as clunky when it's not done with a real understanding of the allusions themselves. Still, I recognise that this is a bit of a personal gripe, although I do think it should probably have been fact-checked.

I would really have liked this to have been longer, because Kasbeer has such an engaging voice and way of writing. I'll very happily pick up anything else she writes, and I'm really gunning for a full length, 300+ pages book of essays, or a really meaty memoir about her days as a PA, because I think that would be great.

This book was free and sent to me an an ARC on NetGalley. However, all reviews are of my own opinions.

*TW for rape, stalking and sexual assault*.

Memoirs are hard to rate, just because I feel rating someone’s life isn’t right - it’s not something to be played with. However, rating the book can sometimes be easier if you’re able to relate to it. This was a raw recollection of Sarah’s trauma and her trying to process/deal with it throughout the years.

Some sections were harder to read than others. Some essays found it easier to pick up relatable sections. Most of the book was relatable for me, sadly. Hearing other perspectives can sometimes help you put your own thoughts and feelings down.

We make sense of violent events by choosing to deny that they happened — or by blaming the victim. This is true even if the victim is yourself.

Sarah Kasbeer’s A Woman, A Plan, An Outline of a Man circles ideas of trauma and how to make sense of it many years later, after it’s been simmering for awhile. It affectingly opens with an epigraph from Anna Akhmatova: “You are so many years late, / Nevertheless I am glad you came” which is quite fitting for its topics.

Kasbeer grew up in Illinois before moving to New York City, and these pieces draw on her adolescent experiences particularly around sexuality and the sort of microtraumas that eventually lead to things bigger and badder. Am I explaining this well? I mean the little pains and experiences that build up to lasting insecurity, and to cope with ever heightening mental pain of it all we self-medicate in various ways — casual sex being a big one here — that scar us more.

There are two main traumas that Kasbeer traces, retelling both multiple times in different ways across various essays. The first is an assault by her teenage boyfriend, who served prison time. The second is a rape that occurred while she was living in Chicago. She has complicated feelings around both, and seems to tell them to make sense of them, and examine how those perceptions have evolved with time.

There’s something quietly terrifying in all of it, because a lot of what she describes isn’t entirely harrowing — these two major traumas aside, obviously — I think they’re events that are quite common for many teenage girls and young women growing up in the US. I say this from a purely anecdotal perspective, but one nevertheless universal among every woman I’ve spoken with intimately, and as the #MeToo era has shown, assault, harassment, and worse are omnipresent.

At times she employs a sharp black humor, and the writing is often poetic. Elsewhere a concept builds that never quite lands, like in one essay about Fiona Apple, herself a model of sorts for many women as she’s always been open about her rape at a very young age and lets the pain of this experience and others appear raw and unfiltered in her music. It seemed a good fit for Kasbeer to explore something, but it never quite coalesces into deeper meaning. And sometimes these stories felt uncomfortably intimate, and I felt myself squirming at things like peeking into her therapy. A real appreciation for confessional writing is necessary, and I expect it will greatly appeal to those who have that.

More than anything, this made me excited to see what she’ll write in the future, because there’s promise at its core. I can’t actually say I enjoyed these — I felt shaken, disturbed, annoyed, and perhaps deeply uncomfortable at the memories it shook loose from my own teens and high school experiences. Although that should probably be a testament to some power in it.

This is the kind of collection that takes time to read. Mainly because every single essay is full of trauma and love and pain and healing.

I want to read everything Sarah Kasbeer ever writes.

Thank you to the publishers and to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.

You would think if you read one book about growing up as a woman you have read them all. But this book proves that is not true. So many truths and so well written. Powerful and inspiring. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.