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Reviews tagging 'Miscarriage'
The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone by Natalie Eve Garrett
3 reviews
leefox's review
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Chronic illness, Death of parent, Dementia, Grief, Medical content, and Miscarriage
Minor: Sexual content
caseys_chapters's review
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
How can a book feel like heartbreak and a hug at once? The Lonely Stories does that. Thank you @catapult for the gifted copy!
This is a collection of essays by 22 writers and edited by Natalie Eve Garrett. Each essay explores being alone. The authors open up about addiction, the pandemic, sexuality, illness, and so much more. It might sound somber (and at times it is), but there are also themes of learning, love, and empowerment.
Some essays were entirely relatable to me, inspiring a whispered, “yeah, me too” and the feeling of poking a bruise. Others opened my eyes to forms of loneliness I’ve never experienced.
The powerful irony of The Lonely Stories is the sense of togetherness it evokes. Loneliness has many forms, but reading this collection highlights both the beauty and hardships we’ve all experienced in our own way.
Definitely would recommend this resonant collection
This is a collection of essays by 22 writers and edited by Natalie Eve Garrett. Each essay explores being alone. The authors open up about addiction, the pandemic, sexuality, illness, and so much more. It might sound somber (and at times it is), but there are also themes of learning, love, and empowerment.
Some essays were entirely relatable to me, inspiring a whispered, “yeah, me too” and the feeling of poking a bruise. Others opened my eyes to forms of loneliness I’ve never experienced.
The powerful irony of The Lonely Stories is the sense of togetherness it evokes. Loneliness has many forms, but reading this collection highlights both the beauty and hardships we’ve all experienced in our own way.
Definitely would recommend this resonant collection
Content Warnings
Moderate: Miscarriage and Addiction
jessdekkerreads's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
5.0
A collection of essays chosen with intention by Garrett, to make you feel seen in your anguish of aloneness, or quite the opposite, in your craving for solitude. “𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘸𝘦 𝘫𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴? 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘫𝘰𝘺?”
.
I’ve sought out the quiet since childhood, at times desperately so, a young child of divorce, feeling as though I’ll lose parts of myself bit by bit if I don’t seek it, an increasing spell of anxiety softly touching my shoulder. I find solitude and healing in being alone. At times such emphatic conversing can be too much to bear, flight becomes the initial response, and if not an option, then reclusiveness. I begin to feel isolated in my detachment, yet accompanied by reticent healing. This tranquility withers around until it entangles me, wraps me up in comfort.
.
Perhaps this is why I feel most at peace in the early morning hours, or late night obscurity, because it reveals itself to me, undomesticated and accepting. There’s no expectation from me, no obligation or restraint, like an alcove I can crawl into, immediate breath filling up my lungs.
.
With each essay I felt less alone in my desire for aloneness, my heart feels complete here in this silence, my mind reassured.
.
Included in this essay collection are stories of a woman who describes the brief moments where she was alone throughout the day; a mother, a writer, escaping to a retreat, a break from domesticity, struggling with her thoughts and freedom, and turning to alcohol in the process; a woman, a mother admitted to the hospital with a life-threatening thyroid storm, and what loneliness inside a hospital and inside her body can feel like; a son living in fear of losing his mother; a woman who experiences a miscarriage and what that aloneness within the grieving process can bring; and perhaps the essay that made me the most emotional, when Jesmyn Ward shares her story of losing her partner during the pandemic.
A huge thank you to Catapult for sending me an advanced copy. It’s out on shelves now, run don’t walk to your nearest bookstore.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Death, and Racism
Moderate: Suicide attempt
Minor: Suicide, Alcoholism, and Addiction
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