A lovely, quiet book about living through the pandemic with young children, the monotony of said living, and the intersection of caregiving and art.

I am a big fan of Kate Zambreno and this book was no different for me. I am always eager to see what she does. Zambreno has the ability to play with form in a way that I am envious and inspired by. She does appear to be a writer for writers, but that's okay with me.

I'm a fan of pretty much everything Kate writes, so this was a win for me. That being said, potentially being due to the fact that the topics of this book don't intrigue me as much as her past work (I am kind of over the Pandemic Book), I would rank this one below Heroines or Drifts.

2.5 stars. I really wanted to like this so much and I just... didn't. I just couldn't connect the way I did with Drifts. She tries to make reference to the lack of equity in education but it just isn't enough to counter the endless references to victorian children or her baby as peak renaissance baby and her daughter's blue eyes.

I just thought it was all a bit weird. It's possible this was by design, it's just her musings. But when she wonders if "innocence and beauty-- idealized narrowly within a certain class, white and wealthy-- and whether these ideas still influence how young children are photographed." I just have to question if she really wonders that?

There is something to love in reading such an intimate depiction of private domestic life, in making the unseen seen but that's where it ends for me. So many of the references to artists documenting time, the home, their internal life, were men and white. Maybe it was meant to be a juxtaposition but she never talks about it.

There is certainly some overlap on the Venn diagram with Camille Dungy's Soil but for me that's a much more current and relevant look at where we are today. I was also this person once, with the peg dolls, reading Little House on the Prairie, but I'm not any more.

I wanted it to be more intersectional.

Another interesting book by Kate Zambreno. One of the very few books examining what living through the pandemic was like in terms of dailiness, routines, lack of solitude and space, raising children, and how we managed to find a way through it. It's not about the pandemic per se, but a time when interior and exterior life collided, and both were jeopardized.