Leslie Jamison

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes "a blazing, unputdownable memoir" (Mary Karr, author of Lit), the "piercing, intimate" story (TIME Magazine) of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage--an exploration of motherhood, art, and new love. ​ Leslie Jamison is among our most beloved contemporary voices, acclaimed for her powerful thinking, deep feeling, and electric prose. In Splinters, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of her most intimate relationships: new motherhood, a ruptured marriage, and the shaping legacy of her own parents' complicated bond. In examining what it means for a woman to be many things at once, Jamison juxtaposes the magical and the mundane in surprising ways. The result is a work of nonfiction like no other, a deep reckoning that grieves the departure of one love even as it celebrates the arrival of another. How do we move forward into joy while haunted by loss? How do we claim hope alongside the harm we've caused? A memoir for which the term tour de force seems to have been coined, Splinters plumbs these questions with writing that is revelatory to the last page, full of the linguistic daring and emotional acuity that made The Empathy Exams and The Recovering instant classics. A master of nonfiction, Jamison evinces once again her ability to "stitch together the intellectual and the emotional with the finesse of a crackerjack surgeon" (NPR).

'Never less than gripping... Reads like a classic' Observer 'Exceptional... thrilling and bitter and fulfilling' Vogue How do you rebuild a life? How do you move forward into joy when haunted by loss? How do you claim hope, while accepting the harm you've caused? This is the story of a ruptured marriage - one that was once brimming with hope. It is also the story of Leslie Jamison's consuming love for her young daughter, and the shaping legacy of her own parents' complicated bond. Exceptionally astute, and written with remarkable candour, Splinters is an account of motherhood, art and love, and what it means for a woman to be many things at once. 'A treatise on the contradictions of being a mother, a partner, a daughter and an artist - singly, and all at once' New Statesman 'Jamison encapsulates lived reality with evocative, embodied detail' Financial Times 'Unputdownable... squishing layer upon layer of resonant truths into meticulously crafted paragraphs' Red

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes the riveting story of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage - an exploration of motherhood, art and new love. In this blend of memoir and criticism, Leslie Jamison turns her attention to some of the most intimate relationships of her life - her consuming love for her young daughter, and a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope - and examines what it means for a woman to be many things at once: a mother, an artist, a teacher, a lover. 'Splinters is as sharp and piercing as its title - a brilliant reckoning with what it means to make art, a self, a family, a life... This memoir is a masterclass' Maggie Smith, author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes "a blazing, unputdownable memoir" (Mary Karr, author of Lit), the "piercing, intimate" story (TIME Magazine) of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage--an exploration of motherhood, art, and new love. ​ Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, the complex. She has been compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, acclaimed for her powerful thinking, deep feeling, and electric prose. But while Jamison has never shied away from challenging material--scouring her own psyche and digging into our most unanswerable questions across four books--Splinters enters a new realm. In her first memoir, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of the most intimate relationships of her life: her consuming love for her young daughter, a ruptured marriage once swollen with hope, and the shaping legacy of her own parents' complicated bond. In examining what it means for a woman to be many things at once--a mother, an artist, a teacher, a lover--Jamison places the magical and the mundane side by side in surprising ways. The result is a work of nonfiction like no other, an almost impossibly deep reckoning with the muchness of life and art, and a book that grieves the departure of one love even as it celebrates the arrival of another. How do we move forward into joy when we are haunted by loss? How do we claim hope alongside the harm we've caused? A memoir for which the very term tour de force seems to have been coined, Splinters plumbs these and other pressing questions with writing that is revelatory to the last page, full of linguistic daring and emotional acuity. Jamison, a master of nonfiction, evinces once again her ability to "stitch together the intellectual and the emotional with the finesse of a crackerjack surgeon" (NPR).

“Beautiful. The human condition is on full display in these glimpses of our essential connectedness. Perfect for our times.” —Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance Sixty-five extraordinary writers grapple with this mystery: How can an ephemeral encounter with a stranger leave such an eternal mark? When Colleen Kinder put out a call for authors to write a letter to a stranger about an unforgettable encounter, she opened the floodgates. The responses—intimate and addictive, all written in the second person—began pouring in. These short, insightful essays by a remarkable cast of writers, including Elizabeth Kolbert, Pico Iyer, Lauren Groff, Gregory Pardlo, Faith Adiele, Maggie Shipstead, Lia Purpura, Kiki Petrosino, and Jamil Jan Kochai, are organized around such themes as Gratitude, Wonder, and Farewell and guide us both across the globe and through the mysteries of human connection. Addressed to a first responder after a storm, a gambler encountered on jury duty, a waiter in Istanbul, a taxi driver in Paris, a roomful of travelers watching reality TV in La Paz, and dozens of others, the pieces are replete with observations about how to live and what we seek, and how a stranger’s loaded glance, shared smile, or question posed can alter the course of our lives. Moving and unforgettable, Letter to a Stranger is an irresistible read for the literary traveler and the perfect gift for anyone who is haunted by a person they met once and will remember forever.

'Intelligent, compassionate, and so fiercely, prodigiously brave. This is the essay at its creative, philosophical best' Eleanor Catton, author of The Luminaries on THE EMPATHY EXAMS A profound exploration of the oceanic depths of longing and obsession, Make It Scream, Make It Burn is a book about why and how we tell stories. It takes the reader deep into the lives of strangers - from a woman healed by the song of 'the loneliest whale in the world' to a family convinced their child is a reincarnation of a lost pilot - and asks how we can bear witness to the changing truths of other's lives while striving to find a deeper connection to the complexities of our own.

From the "astounding" (Entertainment Weekly), "spectacularly evocative" (The Atlantic), and "brilliant" (Los Angeles Times) author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes a return to the essay form in this expansive book. With the virtuosic synthesis of memoir, criticism, and journalism for which Leslie Jamison has been so widely acclaimed, the fourteen essays in Make It Scream, Make It Burn explore the oceanic depths of longing and the reverberations of obsession. Among Jamison's subjects are 52 Blue, deemed "the loneliest whale in the world"; the eerie past-life memories of children; the devoted citizens of an online world called Second Life; the haunted landscape of the Sri Lankan Civil War; and an entire museum dedicated to the relics of broken relationships. Jamison follows these examinations to more personal reckonings -- with elusive men and ruptured romances, with marriage and maternity -- in essays about eloping in Las Vegas, becoming a stepmother, and giving birth. Often compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, and widely considered one of the defining voices of her generation, Jamison interrogates her own life with the same nuance and rigor she brings to her subjects. The result is a provocative reminder of the joy and sustenance that can be found in the unlikeliest of circumstances. Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay One of the fall's most anticipated books: Time, Entertainment Weekly, O, Oprah Magazine, Boston Globe, Newsweek, Esquire, Seattle Times, Baltimore Sun, BuzzFeed, BookPage, The Millions, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Lit Hub, Women's Day, AV Club, Nylon, Bustle, Goop, Goodreads, Book Riot, Yahoo Lifestyle, Pacific Standard, The Week, and Romper.

Just a few years ago, the opioid crisis could be referred to as a 'silent epidemic,' but the scourge of opiate addiction is no longer being overlooked. This is in large part thanks to the extraordinary writings featured in this volume. Some of the most impactful reporting in the United States in recent years has addressed the opiate addiction crisis, a body of work that provides the best picture available of the epidemic. Now, for the first time, these key works of reportage and analysis have been collected in one volume, providing the fullest portrait available of this national tragedy.

Addiction is seemingly inexplicable. From the outside, it can look like wilful, arrogant self-destruction; from the inside, it can feel as inevitable and insistent as a heartbeat. It is possible to describe, but hard to explore. Yet in The Recovering, Leslie Jamison draws on her own life and the lives of addicts of extraordinary talent - John Cheever, John Berryman, Jean Rhys and Amy Winehouse among them - to take us inside the experience of addiction, exposing the contours, edges and wholes of an intoxicated life. Part memoir, part group biography, part literary history and part definitive analysis of cultural and social considerations of addiction, The Recovering is a significant moment in the history of post-war narrative non-fiction.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams comes this transformative work showing that sometimes the recovery is more gripping than the addiction. With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction -- both her own and others' -- and examines what we want these stories to do and what happens when they fail us. All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the complicated bearing that race and class have on our understanding of who is criminal and who is ill. At the heart of the book is Jamison's ongoing conversation with literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Billie Holiday, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, and David Foster Wallace, as well as brilliant lesser-known figures such as George Cain, lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here. Through its unvarnished relation of Jamison's own ordeals, The Recovering also becomes a book about a different kind of dependency: the way our desires can make us all, as she puts it, "broken spigots of need." It's about the particular loneliness of the human experience-the craving for love that both devours us and shapes who we are. For her striking language and piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.

"Inte bara en rörande berättelse om beroende utan en samling skarpsynta essäer om skrivande och sprit." Borås tidning Leslie Jamison vet av egen dyrköpt erfarenhet varför man dricker och varför man måste bli nykter om man, till exempel, vill kunna skriva. Hon tog hjälp av AA, Anonyma Alkoholister, som har berättandet och erkännandet som grundidé. Det har också en rad författare haft, med varierande framgång. I Tillnyktring berättar Leslie Jamison deras historia om kampen mot spriten och drogerna, sammanvävd med hennes egen och AA:s. Det handlar om Raymond Carver och Jean Rhys och andra stora författare, men också om Billie Holiday och Amy Winehouse. Jamison, som fick ett stort genombrott med essäboken Empatiproven (på sv. 2016), har en alldeles egen stil där hon blandar självbiografi med kulturhistoria och reportage. Tillnyktring kommer ut i USA i april i år och är en av årets mest emotsedda böcker." Hon är cool nog att inte framstå som präktig. Kanske kan Leslie Jamison därför skriva så övertygande om drickandets baksida." Svenska Dagbladet"Leslie Jamison skriver sig igenom sitt eget och litteraturens fylleslag. Niklas Qvarnström har läst ett blivande standardverk." Sydsvenskan"Jamison missar inte heller den feministiska vinkeln på alkoholism. Det mystiska, manliga fyllot bemästrar den kittlande frigjordheten en obekymrad, självdestruktiv jakt på sanning medan hans kvinnliga motsvarighet oftare anses ha övergivit, hon har misslyckats med sitt jobb att omhänderta." Dagens Nyheter "Den som törstar efter hårda fakta - och kulturjournalistik liksom samtidshistoria - bör absolut läsa Leslie Jamisons Tillnyktring" Expressen "Biografier om missbruk finns det drösvis av. (…) Jamisons bok om alkoholens koppling med konstnärskap är något annat ändå. Något större. Det är memoar, essä och de försupna författarnas litteraturhistoria. Legendernas öden sammanflätas med hennes eget." Aftonbladet