A review by jessicaxmaria
Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, by Liza Monroy, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Rebecca Wolff, Emily Carter Roiphe, Lauren Elkin, Dana Kinstler, Rayhane Sanders, Chloe Caldwell, Emily St. John Mandel, Eva Tenuto, Elisa Albert, Karen E. Bender, Janet Steen, Valerie Eagle, Ann Hood, Hope Edelman, Melissa Febos, Roxane Gay, Marcy Dermansky, Cheryl Strayed, Maggie Estep, Sari Botton, Ruth Curry, Mira Ptacin, Dani Shapiro, Meghan Daum, Emma Straub, Emily Gould

4.0

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of writers' experiences living, loving, and leaving New York. Most relatable for the likes of me in terms of living here now (going on eight years), and because they are all essays in tribute to one of my favorite essays of all time, Joan Didion's "Goodbye to All That." All of these writers have lived different lives and at different times -- there's a range of ages, a range of 'New Yorks,' but every New York is the same. Perhaps I wasn't buying heroin or waving goodbye to New York as I flew to New Zealand, but there are similar threads through each essay, and it mainly has to do with that character of this city; that emotional relationship you've found yourself in with a location that lives and breathes just like that lover that loved you and dumped you and reclaimed you and sometimes you just left without looking back. Or you embraced it all the more. Almost how similar points of view can produce such different reactions.