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“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself” – Emily Dickinson

With perfect alignment, the cover quote (copied above), encapsulates the beauty and the wonder that is this book. Written by the poet Maggie Smith, this memoir details, with incredible candor, what it may take to find yourself, or to find what is left of yourself, to allow a new beginning, (a new you and a healed you), after a traumatic and brutal end to what had felt so much like a happy and intimate marriage.

As the author (with the clarity of her poet’s heart, and the elegance of her poet’s pen) scrambles to process and scrape together a response to a world suddenly shifting into terrible and unchartered waters, the reader finds herself let in, sharing an outpouring of such evocative skill it is as beautiful to read as it is devastating.

Reading this book is like opening oneself to mounds of pure emotion, couched in words, and organized into little vignettes, softly landing and layering in little piles, all around, – here, there and everywhere – exposing multitudes (as both the author and Walt Whitman acknowledge) of feeling that break your heart, individually and collectively, as you slowly accept them. And think about them, about what the author is evoking, and feeling, and you are right there with her, feeling it too, – unable to breakaway from her truth, that feels real now as it has become part of your own.

There is such a rawness and a purity here, as a life and a love is unpeeled, inch by inch, by a skilled and suffering mind that only knows to write its way along with the pain (and in this way, perhaps, out of the pain?). All we know is what we experience, together, as the author follows her path into something that is new.

I loved this book. As real as any rendering could possibly be, this beautiful memoir is a gift, from the author, straight to the heart of the reader. A gift that this reader will surely find herself reading again.

A great big thank you to the author and the publisher for this book, which I borrowed from my #publiclibrary. All thoughts presented are my own.