sonyahu's review against another edition
5.0
Sarah Einstein’s new e-book, “Remnants of Passion,” traces what is left after infatuations, crushes, love affairs, and missed opportunities through four essays. She writes about the shadows behind emotions; in these pages, she recounts what it feels like to be “lonely in a dangerous way” and what it means to seek fulfillment in others and to be almost or temporarily fulfilled.
Sarah Einstein is an up-and-comer, as she just won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs 2015 award for fiction, which means her full-length book will be published next year by University of Georgia Press. I, for one, cannot wait to read it to get more of the kind of incisive vision and description that appears in these essays.
“The Origins of My Problems with Fidelity” is a tiny essay that will break your heart, thoughtful and shy, about first kisses and massive confusion. Here and elsewhere, Einstein writes about herself as a child and as a young woman without ever talking down to the person she once was. Fans of Sarah Einstein will be pleased to own their own copy of her classic essay “Self-Portrait in Apologies.” (By the way, can I actually call it a classic? It was published by Fringe, which doesn’t publish anymore, though thankfully they’ve left their stuff online so I can still find this hilarious and sad and sweet essay. Maybe it just feels like a classic because I’ve taught it so many times) Yes, this is the essay in which one section is entitled “Apology to Everyone In the Dress Row at the Metropolitan Opera, Seats 114-120, on October 13, 1995.” This is so funny, and captures fond snapshots of an era. Einstein’s thoughtful voice spans accounts of an abortion clinic, a Rainbow Gathering, a love affair over food in New York City, and a gay rights conference, yet she never is, as the saying goes, slumming in her own experience. She is offering it up her moments and past selves with compassion for herself and for everyone else who has gone down the paths she wandered. As she writes in “Fat,” “The days from that year are a blur, the memories bruised…” And yet they have stayed with her, rich with detail. I felt slices of my own past recounted and encountered here, not with those details but with the longing they evoke.
Sarah Einstein is an up-and-comer, as she just won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs 2015 award for fiction, which means her full-length book will be published next year by University of Georgia Press. I, for one, cannot wait to read it to get more of the kind of incisive vision and description that appears in these essays.
“The Origins of My Problems with Fidelity” is a tiny essay that will break your heart, thoughtful and shy, about first kisses and massive confusion. Here and elsewhere, Einstein writes about herself as a child and as a young woman without ever talking down to the person she once was. Fans of Sarah Einstein will be pleased to own their own copy of her classic essay “Self-Portrait in Apologies.” (By the way, can I actually call it a classic? It was published by Fringe, which doesn’t publish anymore, though thankfully they’ve left their stuff online so I can still find this hilarious and sad and sweet essay. Maybe it just feels like a classic because I’ve taught it so many times) Yes, this is the essay in which one section is entitled “Apology to Everyone In the Dress Row at the Metropolitan Opera, Seats 114-120, on October 13, 1995.” This is so funny, and captures fond snapshots of an era. Einstein’s thoughtful voice spans accounts of an abortion clinic, a Rainbow Gathering, a love affair over food in New York City, and a gay rights conference, yet she never is, as the saying goes, slumming in her own experience. She is offering it up her moments and past selves with compassion for herself and for everyone else who has gone down the paths she wandered. As she writes in “Fat,” “The days from that year are a blur, the memories bruised…” And yet they have stayed with her, rich with detail. I felt slices of my own past recounted and encountered here, not with those details but with the longing they evoke.
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