Splinters

'Never less than gripping... Reads like a classic' Observer 'Exceptional... thrilling and bitter and fulfilling' Vogue How do you rebuild a life? How do you move forward into joy when haunted by loss? How do you claim hope, while accepting the harm you've caused? This is the story of a ruptured marriage - one that was once brimming with hope. It is also the story of Leslie Jamison's consuming love for her young daughter, and the shaping legacy of her own parents' complicated bond. Exceptionally astute, and written with remarkable candour, Splinters is an account of motherhood, art and love, and what it means for a woman to be many things at once. 'A treatise on the contradictions of being a mother, a partner, a daughter and an artist - singly, and all at once' New Statesman 'Jamison encapsulates lived reality with evocative, embodied detail' Financial Times 'Unputdownable... squishing layer upon layer of resonant truths into meticulously crafted paragraphs' Red

'Never less than gripping... Reads like a classic' Observer 'Exceptional... thrilling and bitter and fulfilling' Vogue How do you rebuild a life? How do you move forward into joy when haunted by loss? How do you claim hope, while accepting the harm you've caused? This is the story of a ruptured marriage - one that was once brimming with hope. It is also the story of Leslie Jamison's consuming love for her young daughter, and the shaping legacy of her own parents' complicated bond. Exceptionally astute, and written with remarkable candour, Splinters is an account of motherhood, art and love, and what it means for a woman to be many things at once. 'A treatise on the contradictions of being a mother, a partner, a daughter and an artist - singly, and all at once' New Statesman 'Jamison encapsulates lived reality with evocative, embodied detail' Financial Times 'Unputdownable... squishing layer upon layer of resonant truths into meticulously crafted paragraphs' Red

In this blend of memoir and criticism, Leslie Jamison turns her attention to some of the most intimate relationships of her life - her consuming love for her young daughter, and a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope - and examines what it means for a woman to be many things at once: a mother, an artist, a teacher, a lover.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes the riveting story of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage - an exploration of motherhood, art and new love. In this blend of memoir and criticism, Leslie Jamison turns her attention to some of the most intimate relationships of her life - her consuming love for her young daughter, and a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope - and examines what it means for a woman to be many things at once: a mother, an artist, a teacher, a lover. 'Splinters is as sharp and piercing as its title - a brilliant reckoning with what it means to make art, a self, a family, a life... This memoir is a masterclass' Maggie Smith, author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes "a blazing, unputdownable memoir" (Mary Karr, author of Lit ), the "piercing, intimate" story ( TIME Magazine ) of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage--an exploration of motherhood, art, and new love. ​ Leslie Jamison is among our most beloved contemporary voices, acclaimed for her powerful thinking, deep feeling, and electric prose. In Splinters, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of her most intimate relationships: new motherhood, a ruptured marriage, and the shaping legacy of her own parents' complicated bond. In examining what it means for a woman to be many things at once, Jamison juxtaposes the magical and the mundane in surprising ways. The result is a work of nonfiction like no other, a deep reckoning that grieves the departure of one love even as it celebrates the arrival of another. How do we move forward into joy while haunted by loss? How do we claim hope alongside the harm we've caused? A memoir for which the term tour de force seems to have been coined, Splinters plumbs these questions with writing that is revelatory to the last page, full of the linguistic daring and emotional acuity that made The Empathy Exams and The Recovering instant classics. A master of nonfiction, Jamison evinces once again her ability to "stitch together the intellectual and the emotional with the finesse of a crackerjack surgeon" (NPR).

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes "a blazing, unputdownable memoir" (Mary Karr, author of Lit ), the "piercing, intimate" story ( TIME Magazine ) of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage--an exploration of motherhood, art, and new love. ​ Leslie Jamison is among our most beloved contemporary voices, acclaimed for her powerful thinking, deep feeling, and electric prose. In Splinters, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of her most intimate relationships: new motherhood, a ruptured marriage, and the shaping legacy of her own parents' complicated bond. In examining what it means for a woman to be many things at once, Jamison juxtaposes the magical and the mundane in surprising ways. The result is a work of nonfiction like no other, a deep reckoning that grieves the departure of one love even as it celebrates the arrival of another. How do we move forward into joy while haunted by loss? How do we claim hope alongside the harm we've caused? A memoir for which the term tour de force seems to have been coined, Splinters plumbs these questions with writing that is revelatory to the last page, full of the linguistic daring and emotional acuity that made The Empathy Exams and The Recovering instant classics. A master of nonfiction, Jamison evinces once again her ability to "stitch together the intellectual and the emotional with the finesse of a crackerjack surgeon" (NPR).