Idgie Says:
This is a small book, topping out at around 100 pages, but it is so alive that it seems much bigger. These stories breath - they are so filled with life. The pages are full of anger, sadness, humor, and certain passages that just make you stop and think. All of them beautiful memories in their own right.
As I read this book I was emotionally swinging back and forth between laughter, snickering, contemplation and at times becoming quite somber.
Beth Ann throws it all out there, nothing held back from the readers. I loved it and highly recommend you grab a copy. A perfectly sized book to carry in your purse and pull out for those little reading moments.
Click HERE for videos of Beth Ann discussing the book.
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“Morning: bought a bag of frozen peas
to numb my husband’s sore testicles after his vasectomy. Evening: added
thawed peas to our carbonara.”―“Married Love, IV”
The 52 micro-memoirs in genre-defying Heating & Cooling offer bright glimpses into a richly lived life, combining the compression of poetry with the truth-telling of nonfiction into one heartfelt, celebratory book. Ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these micro-memoirs build on one another to arrive at a portrait of Beth Ann Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer, and deeply original observer of life’s challenges and joys. Some pieces are wistful, some wry, and many reveal the humor buried in our everyday interactions. Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs shapes a life from unexpectedly illuminating moments, and awakens us to these moments as they appear in the margins of our lives.
Beth Ann Fennelly is the author of three poetry
collections, Unmentionables, Tender Hooks, and Open House; one memoir,
Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother; and a novel, The Tilted
World, coauthored with her husband, Tom Franklin. She teaches at the
University of Mississippi, and is also the state’s Poet Laureate. She
lives in Oxford, Mississippi.
The 52 micro-memoirs in genre-defying Heating & Cooling offer bright glimpses into a richly lived life, combining the compression of poetry with the truth-telling of nonfiction into one heartfelt, celebratory book. Ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these micro-memoirs build on one another to arrive at a portrait of Beth Ann Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer, and deeply original observer of life’s challenges and joys. Some pieces are wistful, some wry, and many reveal the humor buried in our everyday interactions. Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs shapes a life from unexpectedly illuminating moments, and awakens us to these moments as they appear in the margins of our lives.
- Hardcover: 128 pages
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (October 10, 2017)
About the Author
Beth Ann Fennelly is the author of three poetry
collections, Unmentionables, Tender Hooks, and Open House; one memoir,
Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother; and a novel, The Tilted
World, coauthored with her husband, Tom Franklin. She teaches at the
University of Mississippi, and is also the state’s Poet Laureate. She
lives in Oxford, Mississippi.