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A review by jung
Thin Places: Essays from in Between by Jordan Kisner
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
"The room went still. The doctors and nurses stopped their work as her husband quietly extended his palm toward hers. The air between them grew warm and vanished, and then everyone was weeping in the fluorescent light."
Easily one of my favorite essay collections I've read this year if not of all time. Kisner writes beautifully about the spaces and moments that fill up the space between our eyes and brain.
Kisner is incredibly detailed in her research. Each one of her essays is filled with interesting details and observations. From the ways in which we understand the brain to the first white lady to get a tattoo, it's evident that the amount of love and research put into each of these pours through. She watches an autopsy and asks whether the death is morally a homicide or an accident. In this way, I'm reminded of Didion, in the way that Kisner takes a topic and applies a magnifying lens of cool detachment.
But that isn't to say that this collection isn't filled with emotion and heart. While the facts remain unbiased, Kisner always ties them into her own life and her personal insecurities and shortcomings. And really, what enamored me about this book is Jordan's ability to see shimmering in the air. The moments when she draws the thin threads between what is at hand, and what it means to her. How the mind and thereby reality can be changed through sheer will and the tinted lenses you wear. Particularly in the pieces about religion, where she longs for spirituality in the secular sense, herself being a former Christian, I felt it most prevalent.
In this way, Jordan wants what we all want. A fullness. Belief when there is nothing to believe. Reassurance that this project - life - is worth it. Thin Places tries to find it through contradictions and small unseen details. In this regard, I don't know how successful Kisner is (genuinely, I don't, nor do I think of it as a shortcoming), but at least she's trying.
It did feel a bit front-loaded as a collection, but the first few were already so good that she had me hooked from the start.
Favorites include: Attunement, Thin Places, Jesus Raves, The Other City, and Habitus
"...if you are stuck somewhere small in your mind, somewhere unhappy or afraid or paralyzed or heartbroken, all of which are a kind of claustrophobic circling and circling, you might be able to reverse-engineer an expansion, shove yourself through into some larger mind place by putting yourself in the way of some vaster spaces if the world. At least I think that's so."
4.5-5/5
Easily one of my favorite essay collections I've read this year if not of all time. Kisner writes beautifully about the spaces and moments that fill up the space between our eyes and brain.
Kisner is incredibly detailed in her research. Each one of her essays is filled with interesting details and observations. From the ways in which we understand the brain to the first white lady to get a tattoo, it's evident that the amount of love and research put into each of these pours through. She watches an autopsy and asks whether the death is morally a homicide or an accident. In this way, I'm reminded of Didion, in the way that Kisner takes a topic and applies a magnifying lens of cool detachment.
But that isn't to say that this collection isn't filled with emotion and heart. While the facts remain unbiased, Kisner always ties them into her own life and her personal insecurities and shortcomings. And really, what enamored me about this book is Jordan's ability to see shimmering in the air. The moments when she draws the thin threads between what is at hand, and what it means to her. How the mind and thereby reality can be changed through sheer will and the tinted lenses you wear. Particularly in the pieces about religion, where she longs for spirituality in the secular sense, herself being a former Christian, I felt it most prevalent.
In this way, Jordan wants what we all want. A fullness. Belief when there is nothing to believe. Reassurance that this project - life - is worth it. Thin Places tries to find it through contradictions and small unseen details. In this regard, I don't know how successful Kisner is (genuinely, I don't, nor do I think of it as a shortcoming), but at least she's trying.
It did feel a bit front-loaded as a collection, but the first few were already so good that she had me hooked from the start.
Favorites include: Attunement, Thin Places, Jesus Raves, The Other City, and Habitus
"...if you are stuck somewhere small in your mind, somewhere unhappy or afraid or paralyzed or heartbroken, all of which are a kind of claustrophobic circling and circling, you might be able to reverse-engineer an expansion, shove yourself through into some larger mind place by putting yourself in the way of some vaster spaces if the world. At least I think that's so."
4.5-5/5