aliciasantiago's review against another edition
4.0
This is one of those rare essay books that got better and better every time I picked it up. The interwoven confessions were refreshingly intimate. I can’t wait to recommend this book.
sam8834's review against another edition
4.0
What drew me to Briallen Hopper's collection was its overarching theme of a chosen or found family - a rejection of the dichotomous get-married-or-die-alone life template and an exploration of the romances that exist outside it. To place sole importance on the traditional romantic relationship seems a disservice to the potential that friendships have to be intimate and life-changing, and Hopper recounts many instances of friendships that have shaped her life, including caring for a friend with cancer and moving in with another who is at a very different place in life. Her essay "Moby Dick" is my favorite, a painful, eye-opening account of Hopper's ongoing fertility journey, and I appreciate her candor in talking openly about what it's like to try to have a baby outside the confines of couplehood. As less people are deciding to get married and more are choosing to stay single, I suspect this will be a widely referenced collection on platonic love in years to come.
jenna0010's review against another edition
5.0
Briallen Hopper`s essays are vulnerable and honest. Every bit of this I clung to. I loved the essay about wanting babies. I loved the essay about grief. I saw so much of myself in these words.
fragilecapricorn's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
5.0
christythelibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
My favorite essays: “Lean On”, “On Spinsters”, “Remembering How It Felt to Burn”, “Hoarding”, “Moby-Dick”.
I read and re-read “On Spinsters” years ago online, and it’s the reason I bought this book because I wanted to hear more from this writer about building a life with her friends. The collection is at its best when it’s more memoir. The way she told the story of a difficult time in a friendship in “Hoarding” was really empathetic and well done. I was thinking about that essay for a while.
I have some similarities with the author - single, white, late 30s, some aspects of her religious journey. So there were parts that resonated personally. But also I enjoyed reading about the differences too - she prefers to have roommates, she wants to be a mom, she works in academia, she has a very different family dynamic than mine, etc. “Moby-Dick” - about her efforts to be a mom - had such a great fun structure to it while also being a poignant reflection on those efforts.
The essays that were heavier on describing a movie or tv show were not as interesting to me but maybe they would have been if they were movies or tv shows I had seen. I skipped the Cheers essay because I haven’t seen the show (the only essay I skipped.)
But overall the favorite essays make this collection well worth the read and place on my bookshelf.
I read and re-read “On Spinsters” years ago online, and it’s the reason I bought this book because I wanted to hear more from this writer about building a life with her friends. The collection is at its best when it’s more memoir. The way she told the story of a difficult time in a friendship in “Hoarding” was really empathetic and well done. I was thinking about that essay for a while.
I have some similarities with the author - single, white, late 30s, some aspects of her religious journey. So there were parts that resonated personally. But also I enjoyed reading about the differences too - she prefers to have roommates, she wants to be a mom, she works in academia, she has a very different family dynamic than mine, etc. “Moby-Dick” - about her efforts to be a mom - had such a great fun structure to it while also being a poignant reflection on those efforts.
The essays that were heavier on describing a movie or tv show were not as interesting to me but maybe they would have been if they were movies or tv shows I had seen. I skipped the Cheers essay because I haven’t seen the show (the only essay I skipped.)
But overall the favorite essays make this collection well worth the read and place on my bookshelf.
cameliarose's review against another edition
4.0
Briallen Hopper writes about her relationship with female friends and sisters. She writes about writers, books and TV shows. Above of all, she writes about women. Reading it is like talking to your long term friend who is a compassionate and intelligent, even though our background can not be more different. Like her, I too value female friendship highly. Like her, I did in the past attempt to revive a dead friendship.
My favorite essays in this collection:
-- Lean On: A Declaration of Dependence (I like to lean too. Mutual dependence is the necessity for a friendship)
-- On Spinsters (Very sharp, very thoughtful)
-- Hoarding (Collecting small objects as memory reminders is what I do all the time. Totally understand why she feels giving up things is like abandoning pieces of your past; yes, even best friends need to maintain boundary, but true friends will make it up eventually.)
-- On Sisters (sisters may be your best friends and worst enemies, but they will take you in when nobody else will)
-- Young Adult Cancer Story
-- Coasting
-- The Foundling Museum
-- Moby-Dick
Quotes:
"A family found in adulthood can never attain the involuntary intimacy of the siblings who have known you since birth, and squabbled with you in bathrooms and at breakfast tables from time immemorial. But sometimes, perhaps for this reason, a found family can know and love you for who you are - not for who you once were, or who you never were."
"I cling to the word 'spinster' in the second decade of the twenty-first century because it serves as a challenge to the way our society still conflates coupledom with love, maturity, and citizenship, while seeing unmarried people as - to quote Justice Kennedy - 'condemned to live in loneliness.' And, to borrow a phrase from second-wave historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, I cling to the word because it links me with my spinster sisters throughout history in a shared 'female world of love and ritual.' I cling to it and hold it close because, to riff on a refrain from Hilton Als, it's the spinsters who made me."
My favorite essays in this collection:
-- Lean On: A Declaration of Dependence (I like to lean too. Mutual dependence is the necessity for a friendship)
-- On Spinsters (Very sharp, very thoughtful)
-- Hoarding (Collecting small objects as memory reminders is what I do all the time. Totally understand why she feels giving up things is like abandoning pieces of your past; yes, even best friends need to maintain boundary, but true friends will make it up eventually.)
-- On Sisters (sisters may be your best friends and worst enemies, but they will take you in when nobody else will)
-- Young Adult Cancer Story
-- Coasting
-- The Foundling Museum
-- Moby-Dick
Quotes:
"A family found in adulthood can never attain the involuntary intimacy of the siblings who have known you since birth, and squabbled with you in bathrooms and at breakfast tables from time immemorial. But sometimes, perhaps for this reason, a found family can know and love you for who you are - not for who you once were, or who you never were."
"I cling to the word 'spinster' in the second decade of the twenty-first century because it serves as a challenge to the way our society still conflates coupledom with love, maturity, and citizenship, while seeing unmarried people as - to quote Justice Kennedy - 'condemned to live in loneliness.' And, to borrow a phrase from second-wave historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, I cling to the word because it links me with my spinster sisters throughout history in a shared 'female world of love and ritual.' I cling to it and hold it close because, to riff on a refrain from Hilton Als, it's the spinsters who made me."