Chronology Of Water: A Memoir (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
How do you write a review for a book like this? It deserved five stars after the second sentence. It made me cry in a coffee shop in front of strangers. Critics have weirdly pitched this as a book for women but that's absolute bullshit; everyone needs to read this, especially men. I don't mean "read" anyway; I mean "eat." This is a book you eat.Some of my favorite quotes:"Sometimes you grow up in the space of a minute.""My exhaustion was of course epic, but only in the way that it is for everyone else too.""And we went straight from the orientation meeting to a bar and didn't stop drinking for eleven years, so you might say I was perfectly primed to cross his path.""I wonder what memory is, anyway. What writers are doing when they scratch at it. Usually I think about Proust, who tried to write a sentence about memory and ended up with seven volumes about nostalgia.""I'm saying I think you have to break into the words 'relationship' or 'marriage' or 'family' and bring the walls down.""It's a big deal to make a sentence. It's the line between life and death.""Words carry oceans on their small backs." Beautiful memoir. The prose, the threads that tie things together, the threads that you follow to unknown places . . . I highly recommend this book, especially to those of us with a relationship to trauma and the way in which it informs our relationships and daily lives. It often become such a huge part of who we are. Truly moved by areas of the book that reflect the way in which our experiences inform and root us in places we don't want to be (or sometimes not only want to be, but revel in)- yet also become habitually tied to. Fantastic use of language and a unique, powerful voice.
What do You think about Chronology Of Water: A Memoir (2011)?
Couldn't stop reading it. One of the most beautiful and beautifully honest writers.
—jazzy
This book - I inhaled it. I've never read anything like it.
—3289634
