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4.17 AVERAGE
4.17 AVERAGE
It’s bittersweet that the experience of reading this gorgeous, thoughtful book is over. My own fault for tearing through it in just three days, but I couldn’t help myself — I love the way Melissa explores the contours of her own psyche and life experience.
And I’m not surprised. I’ve loved each of Melissa’s books before, and was so enormously excited to receive an ARC for this one; one I’m excited to read all over again when it’s released in June.
In The Dry Season, as in her previous books, Melissa is so honest, often funny, so curious and considered in her approach to the wisdom that’s come from women before and the wisdom she has gleaned from her own life.
Like Melissa at the start of this book, I’ve been consistently romantically partnered since high school, and often wondered — even as I’m now in a partnership I love — if I would benefit from time alone.
“I was reassured by the fact that I never felt afraid to be alone,” Melissa writes. “I did not consider how one might not ever feel the thing she had successfully outrun.”
Oof.
That was one of many lines I loved that I copied down in my notebook — lines that turned into paragraphs that turned into page after page of Melissa’s words I wanted to remember.
The Dry Season is a book about Melissa’s year of celibacy, yes, but it’s also about the internal narratives we carry into relationships and the relationships we forge (or don’t) with ourselves and our own connection to spirituality; about how having a deeper connection to these inner relationships can allow us to be in relationship with another without needing to be validated or "made whole" by their existence. I can’t think of a single person who wouldn’t benefit from, at the very least, witnessing Melissa’s exploration into the depths of those narratives and relationships from her past.
Much like when I read Leslie Jamison’s Splinters last year (or The Recovering back in 2018), when I read this book, I was struck not just by how much I related to Melissa’s personal experience, but also by how much I desired to interrogate and excavate my own experience like her as a writer.
What a gift to get to read from her again.
And I’m not surprised. I’ve loved each of Melissa’s books before, and was so enormously excited to receive an ARC for this one; one I’m excited to read all over again when it’s released in June.
In The Dry Season, as in her previous books, Melissa is so honest, often funny, so curious and considered in her approach to the wisdom that’s come from women before and the wisdom she has gleaned from her own life.
Like Melissa at the start of this book, I’ve been consistently romantically partnered since high school, and often wondered — even as I’m now in a partnership I love — if I would benefit from time alone.
“I was reassured by the fact that I never felt afraid to be alone,” Melissa writes. “I did not consider how one might not ever feel the thing she had successfully outrun.”
Oof.
That was one of many lines I loved that I copied down in my notebook — lines that turned into paragraphs that turned into page after page of Melissa’s words I wanted to remember.
The Dry Season is a book about Melissa’s year of celibacy, yes, but it’s also about the internal narratives we carry into relationships and the relationships we forge (or don’t) with ourselves and our own connection to spirituality; about how having a deeper connection to these inner relationships can allow us to be in relationship with another without needing to be validated or "made whole" by their existence. I can’t think of a single person who wouldn’t benefit from, at the very least, witnessing Melissa’s exploration into the depths of those narratives and relationships from her past.
Much like when I read Leslie Jamison’s Splinters last year (or The Recovering back in 2018), when I read this book, I was struck not just by how much I related to Melissa’s personal experience, but also by how much I desired to interrogate and excavate my own experience like her as a writer.
What a gift to get to read from her again.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
dark
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Melissa Febos has a gift for taking us on a journey where the twist and turns may make your head spin, but all worth it!
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
fantastic! deeply generous
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Febos combines personal narrative writing with well-researched historical and literary analysis. The book is a cold splash of water to the face any other serial monogamist that come across it. It should go without saying if you enjoyed any of Febos other work, especially Girlhood, then you will love this book as well.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Drug abuse
Minor: Eating disorder, Suicide, Medical trauma
challenging
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
In The Dry Season, queer author Melissa Febos details the year of her life that she spent deliberately celibate and what that taught her about herself and her relationships. It is split into three parts: one outlining her decision and the first three months, the second following the next three months, and then the final six months.
Febos's narrative and decision is driven by her own relationship history and the desire to create healthy relationships for herself. While she often pulls from external sources (often about art, love, and addiction or about celibacy and mysticism), she seems less interested in pulling apart the structural influences that impact us all. She is interested in the decisions she has made. While this makes for a vulnerable, interesting, and at times, punishing, self-examination it is less interested in the structural. There is acknowledgement of the forces of compulsory sexuality and compulsory romanticism without ever saying those words or alluding to the theories behind them. At one point she finds herself shocked by all of the media that centers sex and romance (like talk to a teenage asexual and they'll have a list for you).
I found myself frustrated (although unsurprised) by how often the book brushed against the asexual without ever acknowledging it. There's Audre Lorde's erotic (which has laid the foundation for Ela Przybylo's asexual erotic). Discussion of Octavia Butler's singular devotion to her art (and author that Sherronda J. Brown has read as at the very least, politically asexual). There seems to be more interest in the mystic celibates (which are truly fascinating!) than in modern people who have opted out of modern sexuality in the same ways that Febos does.
All that being said, this book did in some ways parallel my own experience with divesting from our compulsory sexual/romantic world and ultimately raised some interesting questions for me about asexuality and celibacy.
Febos's narrative and decision is driven by her own relationship history and the desire to create healthy relationships for herself. While she often pulls from external sources (often about art, love, and addiction or about celibacy and mysticism), she seems less interested in pulling apart the structural influences that impact us all. She is interested in the decisions she has made. While this makes for a vulnerable, interesting, and at times, punishing, self-examination it is less interested in the structural. There is acknowledgement of the forces of compulsory sexuality and compulsory romanticism without ever saying those words or alluding to the theories behind them. At one point she finds herself shocked by all of the media that centers sex and romance (like talk to a teenage asexual and they'll have a list for you).
I found myself frustrated (although unsurprised) by how often the book brushed against the asexual without ever acknowledging it. There's Audre Lorde's erotic (which has laid the foundation for Ela Przybylo's asexual erotic). Discussion of Octavia Butler's singular devotion to her art (and author that Sherronda J. Brown has read as at the very least, politically asexual). There seems to be more interest in the mystic celibates (which are truly fascinating!) than in modern people who have opted out of modern sexuality in the same ways that Febos does.
All that being said, this book did in some ways parallel my own experience with divesting from our compulsory sexual/romantic world and ultimately raised some interesting questions for me about asexuality and celibacy.