A review by chillcox15
Tonight I'm Someone Else: Essays by Chelsea Hodson

3.0

I have this fond memory, one that could take the form of a Chelsea Hodson essay, in fact, borne from a wistful time in my life when I was jobless and nearly penniless one summer, feeling paralyzed by indecisions and unforced boredom, when I heard about a great new chapbook called Pity the Animal, which I biked to Powell's to read. It was short, I could sit in the gigantic downtown store and read the whole thing. It was cheap, I could afford to spend the $5 to buy it for myself. It was small, I could fit it in my breast pocket on the ride home. I did all three, and read it again a few times that summer. It felt personal, moreso than the books that filtered in from the library and stacked next to the papasan I sat on all day as I had little else to do but read. It's a bit of a disappointment, then, to pick up Hodson's new collection, which includes Pity the Animal, and find it to be too heavy, too big, too laborious. What made that little chapbook special feels repetitive here, because Hodson so rarely changes gears away from that tone, of the semi-mystic, semi-regretful memorysmith.