Scan barcode
brice_mo's review
3.5
Melissa Febos’s Abandon Me feels underbaked and overwritten, and I think that tension means its title will hit readers very differently—either as an invitation or a challenge.
I mean, my favorite part of a brownie is the underbaked part, but maybe you’re an edges person.
These are gorgeously written essays, and Melissa Febos has an amazing sense of when to withhold or release a turn. She practically dances through the form as someone who has rehearsed enough to make improvisation look effortless.
That said, Febos often seems more concerned with how an experience fits in a sentence than with how it fits in a life. These essays showcase open-ended wounds, and they frequently serve to pick at scabs in lieu of stitching them shut. It can be rough.
In conversation with Body Work, I interpret Abandon Me as highlighting how life is lived in a state of constant revision, but I think there are very fair critiques to be made about the author’s moral ambivalence. I think it serves the project, but that’s subjective.
I’m guessing that readers’ enjoyment will depend on how they feel about the following question:
Can pain be art without an obligatory answer?
Febos seems to think so.
I mean, my favorite part of a brownie is the underbaked part, but maybe you’re an edges person.
These are gorgeously written essays, and Melissa Febos has an amazing sense of when to withhold or release a turn. She practically dances through the form as someone who has rehearsed enough to make improvisation look effortless.
That said, Febos often seems more concerned with how an experience fits in a sentence than with how it fits in a life. These essays showcase open-ended wounds, and they frequently serve to pick at scabs in lieu of stitching them shut. It can be rough.
In conversation with Body Work, I interpret Abandon Me as highlighting how life is lived in a state of constant revision, but I think there are very fair critiques to be made about the author’s moral ambivalence. I think it serves the project, but that’s subjective.
I’m guessing that readers’ enjoyment will depend on how they feel about the following question:
Can pain be art without an obligatory answer?
Febos seems to think so.
mjcerise's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
hannahbristol's review
3.0
I love Melissa Febos as an essayist, and this book did not feel edited out of separate essays enough. Pieces of it were really repetitive as if she was newly re-establishing the same background over and over again and it didn’t feel like the chapters sufficiently built on each other
jany_wants_a_cracker's review
3.5
a very good and very intense memoire. one of the most infuriating relationships ive read so far. the structure was lacking for me. i found myself skimming parts of the greek mythologie references that were put right behind the emotional intense passages. from what ive gathered the author wrote more about her life in the form of memoirs. im not intensely interested in her per say, but i probs wouldnt turn it down for the queer perspective it provides.