An absorbing, moving, cathartic collection.
Writers reflect on their experiences of loneliness and solitude.
In this above-average collection of personal essays, a richly diverse set of writers recall how periods of solitude have impacted their lives. Depending on their past or present circumstances, they evoke sensations of dread or despair, joy and enlightened freedom, often working through their darkest emotions to discover a renewed sense of well-being. “I was drawn to essays about the quiet delights of solitude and the shocks of isolation, as well as reflections on the gentler waves of loneliness that come and go throughout our lives,” writes Garrett. “I longed to create a harbor for our most vulnerable stories, told with urgency and sometimes with levity—affirming stories that might reassure and reconnect us. Most of all, I hoped to shine light on a universal emotion and experience that is often pushed down into the dark.” Each essay, most of which are memorable, offers a meaningful glimpse into the varying depths of loneliness. “Javelinas” is Claire Dederer’s account of her six-week writer’s residency in Marfa, Texas, where she confronted her all-consuming issues with alcoholism. In “Exodus 2020,” Emily Raboteau hauntingly recounts a sorrowful sense of impending loss and doom caused by the mass departure of a New York City apartment building’s tenants during the pandemic. Lena Dunham examines her evolving feelings of aloneness during the breakup of a long-term relationship. Yiyun Li’s “To Speak Is To Blunder but I Venture” and Jean Kwok’s “The Perpetual Foreigner” movingly reflect on their personal journeys and struggles as Chinese immigrants; the loneliness of forfeiting one’s native language; and the sense of freedom in allowing one’s ambition to flower. It’s been well noted that writing can be a lonely endeavor, but this book demonstrates that great illumination can be found in the process. Other contributors include Maggie Shipstead, Lev Grossman, Anthony Doerr, Peter Ho Davies, Jesmyn Ward, and Melissa Febos.
An absorbing, moving, cathartic collection.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-948226-60-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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