Reading the Waves

December 15, 2024
A noted writer and teacher explores the uses of memoir to recast and heal the wounds of the past. Yuknavitch, whose previous memoirThe Chronology of Water (2011) has been both a viral sensation and a touchstone for students of the genre, returns to personal writing after several novels. "What if we could read our past, our memories, even our bodies, as if they too were books open to endless interpretation?" The point, she says, is to show readers, possibly aspiring writers themselves, how it is possible to "imagine a map" that loosens the grip of sorrow. Among the experiences she mines are her relationship with her second husband, Devin, who either fell or jumped from a construction crane in 2015; an abusive relationship with a poet boyfriend; her troubled connections with her parents; and the stillbirth of a baby girl. She mentions her son Miles, now a college graduate and an artist, in terms of her experience of an empty nest, but his story, she asserts, is not hers to tell. (Amusingly, she reports that at 15 he asked her if it were possible "to make important art if you came from a loving and stable homelife.") She discusses the murders of her cousin Michelle and of a talented African American student she briefly worked with, saying she is "suspicious of conclusions" about violence against women but has "chosen to spend [her] life creating a literature of resistance." While much of the material and the formal experiments she assays will be familiar to readers of the first memoir, the connection between the titles of the two supports the idea that this is a re-examination of old stories. The last chapter, "Solaces," contains advice and instructions to the reader, words of inspiration of the sort she offers her students in workshops. "Your failures and fears are portals, step through." Full of the messy, moving, in-your-face inspiration and storytelling for which Yuknavitch is beloved.

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Starred review from December 1, 2024
Yuknavitch, author of the best-selling The Chronology of Water (2011), has crafted a remarkable, twisting memoir. When we revisit memories and retell our stories, how does it change us and the stories of our identities? How can memory be unreliable, particularly in the face of trauma, and how does revisiting, rediscovering, affect us? Yuknavitch explores all of this through her various loves and griefs: the deaths of her mother, an alcoholic but joyous woman who nonetheless was complicit in an abusive household; of a daughter, stillborn; and of a soulmate of sorts, Devin, with whom she had a toxic but passionate relationship of many years. At turns emotional and darkly hilarious, Yuknavitch's memoir is a maze of sorts but rewarding, tracing her identity as someone built to swim and forced to walk on land, a survivor carrying around too many bodies in her own, ready to finally lay some of them down. While at times the wordplay can feel indulgent, this memoir is rich ground and a magnificent narrative about memory, trauma, and healing. Fans of genre-bending or lyrical memoir will enjoy this multilayered meditation leveraging Yuknavitch's creativity, thoughtfulness, and sense of wonder.

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Starred review from January 1, 2025

This gorgeous, gut-wrenching memoir in fragments and stories brings bestselling novelist Yuknavitch's (Thrust) gifts to the surface while offering readers glimpses into profound depths. She shows the intersections of her life as a woman, writer, and swimmer, always in danger of drowning under the weight of the words and worlds she carries with her. From the book title's nod to Virginia Woolf's The Waves to the relentless pursuit of new stories, this is an exploration of the rocks in one's pockets that, if not released, prove fatal. Yuknavitch writes about her father's abuse, her complex relationship with her mother, and the relationships that existed at the center and on the edges of her own identity and the death of her child. But this isn't a simple meditation on loss or a collection of remembered fragments from life; instead, it pushes readers to contemplate how they might read their own life stories with the same complex emotions they bring to reading novels. VERDICT Brilliant, unflinching, and written with the same heady, literary sophistication as Yuknavitch's novels. Compounded by real moments of narrative vulnerability, this memoir is as much an act of dismembering as it is of remembering.--Emily Bowles

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