Allow me to preface my review by saying this: I love CJ Hauser. I have loved her writing since I was 19 reading The Crane Wife for the first time in the Paris Review, awestruck at how understood I felt for the first time in my life. I squealed when I found out about her memoir, squealed again when I received the arc copy. That being said, I don’t know how to feel about this book.

On one hand, CJ Hauser has not lost her touch: she has a knack for crafting the universal girlhood/womanhood experience out of words in a way that feels like a hug for the soul. I sighed of relief while reading certain sections. “She gets it,” I thought. “She gets ME.” CJ Hauser may not be a mother by blood [yet] but I am certain that she is a mother in spirit to myself and any other heartbroken bisexual girl who picks up this memoir and sees fragments of herself within these pages. It takes an immense amount of talent to make a stranger feel less alone in this large world—and for that I am flabbergasted and beyond thankful.

On the other hand, this memoir teeters on the edge of rhetorical analysis a bit too often for my liking. There’s only so much room in my heart for plot-summary of pop-culture phenomenons that I’m unfamiliar with. I understand that this is [loosely] the structure of The Crane Wife; it works for an individual article, but I’m not sure it works for an entire book. I felt, at times, that i was being bashed over the head with exposition. I wanted to hear more about Hauser’s experiences and ruminations, not Hauser’s experiences and how they are JUST LIKE THAT TIME IN THIS TV SHOW—WAIT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT IT!

But she always manages to reel it back in, to tie these references back to her own life and to the point of her sharing these specific moments with us. And it clicks, and I’m less upset about having trudged through the plot-summary, but I still wish I hadn’t had to trudge through it in the first place. The book as a whole made me feel SEEN, and so I can only be grateful for women like Hauser: women who put all of their cards on the table, women who remind me that to be myself is not a curse.

Many thanks to Penguin and NetGalley for the advance copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

I was a huge fan of Hauser's essay from which this collection gets its name -- I've included it on syllabi and had great fun pulling apart its intricacies with students. Each time, I marvel at how deceptively complicated Hauser's writing is; she manages so many neat formal tricks without calling overt attention to her cleverness. As such, her essays reward deep, close reading & many re-reads (which is not something I say about all essays!). This is a moving, heartfelt, often funny, very poignant memoir-in-essay that more than deserves a spot on your shelf!

I remember reading and loving the title essay when it appeared years ago. I was very excited to hear the author was putting out a collection of essays. This book exceeded my high expectations. Beautiful writing, heartbreaking, funny, touches on many topics.