The minute I start reading Leslie Jamison's Splinters, right away my reaction is WOW! the language is so good. This is someone who is really a master of craft, you just tumble into her story because you're seduced by her metaphors, by her seeming/presumed honesty. All good literature should make you feel something. A visceral experience. In reading Jamison's new book, all the way through I just kept thinking: she is such an excellent writer." The language! the language seduces you into the story. Here you are clearly in the hands of someone who knows about language. You know as a reader that you are going to be well taken care of.
I adore Leslie Jamison's work, I think her essays are some of the greatest essays written in the 21st century, Splinters is no exception. The more I think about it, the more I think it is a masterpiece. It's quite an unusual story where nothing happens but everything happens. I highly recommend it as it is doing something different with language and storytelling and provides readers who are writers with a freedom of their own to bend the rules and make something new.

I really love Leslie Jamison’s writing and have enjoyed every single one of her books, but Splinters is my favorite. It’s a memoir about divorce and motherhood and writing and friendship and love. Some lines I loved:

"In many photos from my childhood, my mother is embracing me—one arm wrapped around my stomach, the other pointing at something, saying, Look at that. To talk about her love for me would feel tautological; she has always defined my notion of what love is."

"Just like it’s meaningless to say our ordinary days meant everything to me, because they created me. I don’t know any self that exists apart from them."

Incredible and insightful memoir. Will definitely recommend. Beautiful comments on motherhood. Heart wrenching account of divorce.

maybe *the* memoir of the year? read this on my ipad but ended up buying a hardcopy. jamison's voice is startlingly honest and vulnerable.

Splinters is a memoir that skillfully portrays Leslie Jamison’s life as a mother, wife (and then not a wife), professional, person in recovery, and most meaningfully a person seeking connection and trying to navigate the pieces of a life that together make a whole.

The memoir is written in short vignettes that draw on Jamison’s surroundings and experiences and that she uses to demonstrate learnings, insights into oneself and life, and sometimes even god. At times the construction of this book seems like diary entries; they stand alone but the disparate pieces put together make a whole picture. I love how this structure feeds into the “splinters” theme of little fragments that can be chipped away or pieced together to make something whole.

It is difficult to review a memoir because it seems unfair to judge someone’s experience. What I can share is that I found so much to relate to while reading this. Even though our lives are very different, Jamison shared experiences that may be universal to mothers and some that may not be universal to all but that I personally share with her. I could not have been so public about my own experience but I’m so grateful Jamison did so I can see myself in her story and feel that connection.

There were times I struggled with the structure. This says more about me as a reader than it does the book. I prefer longform fiction and shy away from short stories; I most appreciate the places where Jamison lingers longer and at times felt things were cut short. I appreciate the metaphors and conclusions she draws from her experience but at times it is a bit heavy on the revelations and morals. Jamison’s observations are smart and meaningful but I lean toward liking the detailed descriptions of everyday life that memoirs offer more than the observations and conclusions drawn from these experiences. This is the perfect kind of book to dip in and out of and have on the go and for someone (like a new parent) who can only read in small stretches. Definitely worth the read if you enjoy memoirs!

Thank you @littlebrown and @netgalley for the #gifted eARC)

Leslie Jamison has a unique talent for spinning a narrative out of her life, finding threads and pockets to explore in events that might seem mundane or random in less capable hands. In this book, she explores the experiences of becoming a mother, getting divorced, and parenting through working, dating, and a pandemic, and while there's a compelling engine at its core, I wound up feeling a bit empty at the end. There's a moment when one of Leslie's friends tells her it feels like she's always going through some major life event, and by the end, it's easy to see why this could be a tiring energy to be around.

A memoir of divorce, single motherhood and how to compose a new story after the one you originally crafted isn’t the one that comes true. The memoir begins with Jamison entering her temporary rental with her 18 month old daughter after leaving her home she had with her husband. She had been her husband, C’s (she never reveals his name) second wife, his first wife had died of cancer and left him with a very young daughter when she met him. Jamison explores her parents’ troubled marriage as well as her relationships with her parents, her ex and her new boyfriends.

I found the writing of this memoir to be absolutely beautiful and I know that memoirs speak to different people; but this one unfortunately didn’t speak to me. Much of the book was spent on navigating motherhood of a newborn through toddlerhood, but there wasn’t anything new about her motherhood journey and therefore it wasn’t that interesting to read; it felt like looking at a pile of someone’s baby pictures where they think they’re amazing but you just have to smile. So while I think she’s an amazing writer, this just wasn’t the story of hers I wanted to read.

3.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for the ARC to review

Leslie Jamison takes mundane events — the birth of a child, the dissolution of a marriage, the juggling of the demands of a career with the demands of a family – but, with her trademark unflinching perception, imbues them with so much emotion and pathos that there is not a page of this memoir that I didn’t highlight. I was transfixed by her crystalline prose. When she writes about her ex-husband’s rage, she says, “Over the years of our marriage, I’d grown attuned to a sudden flare in his eyes, and the shift of molecules in the room before an eruption of anger, like the pressure drop before a storm. It was almost a relief whenever the rains came. It was better than the humidity of his unspoken rage.” Jamison’s description of balancing her ambition with her newborn daughter is relatable to every working mother: “It was almost furtive, the way I glanced around to see if anyone was watching. No one was watching. It was three in the morning. It felt like I’d already done something wrong. Who brings a laptop with her to the hospital to give birth.” Every sentence in Jamison’s memoir reads like a profound truth. One of our best contemporary writers, Jamison is at the height of her powers in this literary examination of her own life. Thank you Little, Brown and Company and Net Galley for providing me with an advance copy of this powerful memoir.

Like most people, I assume, I read to get out of my head and into someone else's. There were moments in Splinters, though, that so deftly and precisely illuminated my own experience of motherhood that I felt abruptly thrust back into my own body. More than any other book I've read, Jamison captures the central tensions that define parenthood: the absolute boredom and endless repetition suddenly interrupted by world-expanding joy, the way that months of challenge look beautiful from the distance of memory, the impossibility of being a full, articulate, aware adult with a child in front of you (the impossibility of feeling like a full person when the child is elsewhere). I didn't come into this book about divorce and dating and the pandemic expecting to learn anything about parenting, but Jamison's talent for noticing the sublime has made me want to develop that skill, too.

Perhaps because I felt so seen in Jamison's descriptions of early parenthood, I found her descriptions of her dating life after her divorce somewhat harder to fathom. At one point, she describes a close friend telling her that their relationship is exhausting--that the constancy of Jamison's crises feels hard to witness and stand alongside. Toward the end of the book, I began to understand her friend's point. Jamison's compelling depiction of the end of her marriage to C., which largely avoids taking sides or drawing absolute conclusions, shifts into something more dramatic and self-conscious when she describes subsequent relationships. The "tumbleweed" and the "ex-philosopher" seem like obvious wrong choices from the start, and I found myself frustrated by the number of pages devoted to the kind of doomed romance I associate with CW shows. That said, would I have felt as personally implicated in these dating sagas if I wasn't already emotionally involved in Jamison's exploration of motherhood? Probably not! Also, as Jamison points out, her Scorpio moon basically demands that she constantly seek reinvention. My Virgo sun is like, nah.

Overall, I found Splinters a lovely and thought-provoking read. Jamison's prose is gorgeous, and the memoir's structure--little gems of moments existing next to each other, but not quite in chronological order--make for interesting juxtapositions. Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for the ARC!

This is my first Leslie Jamison. I’ve dipped into The Empathy Exams a little. In her memoir of separating then divorcing her husband, while their child is a baby, Jamison carefully chooses parts and pieces of that time that are poignant, sad, lonely, triumphant, heartwarming. All of it.

Her prose is at times very straightforward and then lyrical with occasional words of wisdom learned through her own experiences. Jamison’s writing style is very close to the bone and brutally honest.

I like how the title "Splinters" is woven throughout Jamison's memoir about becoming a mother, divorced, using dating apps, being with her mother, and questioning her relationship with her father--all splinters of life. At one point, I expected her daughter to have a splinter in her finger, one more splinter connection. For those of us who have read all Jamison's memoirs, we see other threads reappear: alcoholism, anorexia, recovery groups. I was relieved that she hadn't returned to alcohol, which she questioned momentarily at one point, I think many single mothers will relate to the frustration of doing all the tasks alone, yet, remembering why they are single, and how doing tasks with someone who was bringing you down was even more difficult. As always, the prose is vibrant, and she doesn't shy away from showing her insecurities, as a matter of fact, she brings these up throughout the memoir, and, we readers are relieved she has such a large group of supportive friends, an extremely supportive mother, and that her ex-husband appears to be a very caring father to their daughter. It's a funny age to still be in your thirties, but then a mother of an infant, being tired from endless parenting and job responsibilities, yet, still feeling the wild urge to be sexually engaged, even though that ends up taking up so much more of of what was left of your energy supply. I'll be curious what Jamison writes about as her daughter and she both grow older.. Enjoyable, quick read.

Jamison is a writer of such talent - her observations are so clear and unique, I enjoyed reading her experiences of motherhood, but was less interested in the rest. And, wow, will be glad when all of my favorite writers get their COVID book out of their systems.

I am a big fan of Leslie Jamison's writing and this doesn't disappoint. She is unfailingly honest about her won role in her marriage breakdown, but, mostly, this is a book about how the love for her daughter blindsided her.

"Splinters" is a memoir that is equally raw and painful as it is beautiful and evocative. I found myself needing to take a pause from reading at times to let the powerful images soak in and settle. This reminded me of Maggie Smith's "You Could Make This Place Beautiful" but it is more focused on the mother-daughter-child relationship, which I loved. Highlighted many passages. Recommended if you love beautiful writing, and memoirs about babies and broken marriages. Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown, and Company for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this, plain and simple - and I love all of Leslie Jamison's work, but I think this is my new favorite. Vivid, evocative, universally relatable even as the particulars are unique and specific. I'm not a mother nor have I gone through a divorce, but my digital galley is heavily annotated all the same. Will enthusiastically recommend, particularly to readers of Maggie Smith's You Could Make This Place Beautiful (obvious comparison) and Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility (less obvious, but the writing style and book tour elements were reminiscent!). Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown, and Company for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown & Company for the ARC!

"Splinters" is an excruciating read—a celebration of motherhood and its beauty through the refracting lens of life’s brutality.

This is a book about what emerges from a fractured relationship—both the pain of a divorce and the joy of being a parent.

At times, Leslie Jamison’s desire to “have it all” while being a mother, writer, and scholar might read as cold. I don’t mean this as a critique—it’s a reflection of the author’s unwillingness to entertain clichés about motherhood, instead inviting readers into the discomfort of her occasionally pragmatic decision-making. It is unfair that culture expects motherhood to usurp all other identities, and Jamison wrestles with the expectations that have been foisted upon her. She is blunt in her monogamous, maternal desire, and she is honest about what she wants in a relationship, often to her own detriment.

I’m not sure I’ve read such an effective articulation of how embarrassing love is, and I think the author is well-attuned to all the shorthand we use to avoid grief. It’s painful to read, and for the majority of the memoir, I was unsure about whether or not it is constructive.

By the end, I did not enjoy this book. Reading it feels like driving a finger into someone’s open wound. I don’t think Jamison overshares or self-flagellates, but it is almost impossible to not feel like a participant in her suffering. After hundreds of pages reflecting on her inadequacies and insecurities, the details begin to accumulate with such intensity that the reader loses perspective. In a sense, this is powerful because it resists narrative in the way that heartbreak does, but it also precludes the possibility of a thematic anchor.

The severity of the book feels even more jagged when it becomes clear there is no catharsis in sight. In the closing pages, Jamison offers a few lessons she has learned, but they feel more like an obligation to the form than natural extensions of anything that came before. When I finally put the book down, it felt like a relief.

"Splinters" offers little beyond grief, and I think most readers already have enough of that in their lives.

Leslie Jamison is one of my must-read writers, so her new memoir, Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, was one of my most anticipated books of 2024. Thankfully, it was as good as I expected.

Splinters is Jamison's memoir of divorce and single motherhood. She writes about choosing to leave C., a fellow writer and the father of her young daughter. She's unhappy in the marriage and is hurt by C.'s anger. The couple's daughter is only a baby when they separate, so Jamison's book isn't just about a divorce but her evolution and struggles as a mother.

While reading Splinters, I kept thinking about Maggie Smith's memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, another story about divorce and motherhood. Smith's book is very good, but Jamison's is much more raw. She doesn't hold back in this book, writing honestly about her ex's shortcomings while not afraid to disclose her own. Jamison is a recovering alcoholic and anorexic, topics she writes about openly, so beware if that content is triggering for you.

I enjoyed much about this book, especially the section set in 2020 which details Jamison's experience having COVID while alone in an apartment with her toddler for days at a time. Her deep love for her child comes through each page of this book, and so do the difficulties of being a wife and mother, especially one with heavy emotional baggage.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book.

A beautiful story of love—for one’s child, for being a mother, for art—and of love lost.

I originally believed that this wasn’t a memoir for me. The synopsis sounded interesting but I thought to myself, “I’m not a mother. I’m not sure I will get anything out of reading this.” Having read about Jamison’s writing (though not reading the writing itself) and reading of her talent, I was interested enough to hesitantly request this memoir from NetGalley.
Incase you are in my boat and wondering the same thing—I’m not a mother therefore why should I read this—just trust me when I say that you need to read it. This was my first encounter with Jamison’s work and I am an immediate fan. Her writing is insanely beautiful and lyrical and she stitches words together with such ease. There were many moments in this reading where I had to stop to go back and re-read a passage or sentence over again because the beauty of it took my breath away. Her observations of the world around her are awe-inspiring.

Jamison writes about the real and challenging and beautiful moments of early motherhood—of gaining new love—while her marriage, simultaneously, breaks down. She writes about learning to balance motherhood with artistry—how can one do both when they each require full attention?

If I had my own copy, it would be heavily annotated.

To say Leslie Jamison is a brilliant writer is an understatement. This is a poignant and raw web of addiction, motherhood, divorce, falling in love, and all things in between -- even dating during covid quarantine. She eloquently changes perspectives throughout the narrative to approach each and every tough topic from a different point in her life to really drive home her story, which is filled with so much depth. To me this was all about peeling back the layers of self reflection and watching Jamison ask herself whether she is doing what's best for herself.

Jamison’s latest is going to be seen as a memoir of a single mother navigating a creative life but underneath it depicts a voice screaming into a canyon to no response, not even an echo. Between children, partners, lovers, friends, parents, and oneself, we all become a familiar to love like we would a vampire. We seek its validation, earning glimpses of possibilities but always circling back to the reality of “despite everything, it’s still you.” And as Jamison states, “We are loved in the ways we are loved.” As always, Leslie is honest, self aware, and first to put herself under examination