The Leaving Season; A Memoir in Essays
Title of the book: The Leaving Season; a Memoir in EssaysAuthor: Kelly McMasters
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Publishing Date: 2023
ISBN: 978-0-393-54105-2
Summary:
A memoir in intimate essays navigating marriage and motherhood, art and ambition, grief and nostalgia, and the elusive concept of home. Kelly McMasters found herself in her midthirties living her fantasy: she’d moved with her husband, a painter, from New York City to rural Pennsylvania, where their children roamed idyllic acres in rainboots and diapers. The pastoral landscape and the bookshop they opened were restorative at first, for her and her marriage. But soon, she was quietly plotting her escape. In The Leaving Season , McMasters chronicles the heady rush of falling in love and carving out a life in the city, the slow dissolution of her relationship in an isolated farmhouse, and the complexities of making a new home for herself and her children as a single parent. She delves into the tricky and often devastating balance between seeing and being seen; loss and longing; desire and doubt; and the paradox of leaving what you love in order to survive. Whether considering masculinity in the countryside through the life of a freemartin calf, the vulnerability of new motherhood in the wake of a car crash, or the power of community pulsing through an independent bookshop, The Leaving Season finds in every ending a new beginning.
Author Info:
(From goodreads)
Kelly McMasters is an essayist, professor, mother, and former bookshop owner. She is the author of the forthcoming The Leaving Season: A Memoir-in-Essays (WW Norton, 2023) and co-editor of the forthcoming Wanting: Women Writing About Desire (Catapult, 2023). Her first book, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, was listed as one of Oprah's top 5 summer memoirs and is the basis for the documentary film ‘The Atomic States of America,’ a 2012 Sundance selection, and the anthology she co-edited with Margot Kahn, This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home (Seal Press, 2017), was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, The Paris Review, The American Scholar, River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction, Tin House, Newsday, Time Out New York, Columbia Magazine, and MrBellersNeighborhood.com, among others. She holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia's School of the Arts and is the recipient of a Pushcart nomination and an Orion Book Award nomination. Kelly has spoken about creative nonfiction at TEDx, authors@google, and more, and has taught at mediabistro.com, Franklin & Marshall College, and in the undergraduate writing program and Journalism Graduate School at Columbia University, among others. She is currently an Associate Professor of English and Director of Publishing Studies at Hofstra University in NY.
Stories:
Personal Opinion:
From time immemorial, a certain way of life is pushed upon people as ideal; get married, go live in a countryside and become a family. However, is this way of life right for everyone? What the readers may see on the surface as a dream- living in a countryside with an artist husband and owning a bookshop-turns out to be more complex and nightmarish than one hears in tales because it often means giving up parts of self. While for me the stories were a bit complex, the language and topics covered were beautiful and well done. I think my favorite essay was definitely THE LEAVING SEASON where Kelly McMasters explores the difference between living somewhere temporarily versus somewhere permanently. I also loved her explorations of countryside life and of people that inhabit the area, giving them complexity that is lacking in other tales. While I wasn't able to relate to a lot of essay parts, I definitely think I will get more out of the book at a later time, because this is a book one will want to re-read over and over just to explore the language and lessons learned.
This was given for review
4 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)
Home Fires
Intrepid
"His Wife Once Bit His Hand to the Bone"
Cycling
Still Life 1: The City
Hearts and Bones
The Cow
The Ghosts in the Hills
Lessons from a Starry Night
The Leaving Season
Still Life 2: The Country
The Bookshop: a Love Story
Our Castle Year
The Stone Boat
Imaginary Friend
Suspended Animation
Finding Home
Still Life 3: The Suburbs
End Papers
Personal Opinion:
From time immemorial, a certain way of life is pushed upon people as ideal; get married, go live in a countryside and become a family. However, is this way of life right for everyone? What the readers may see on the surface as a dream- living in a countryside with an artist husband and owning a bookshop-turns out to be more complex and nightmarish than one hears in tales because it often means giving up parts of self. While for me the stories were a bit complex, the language and topics covered were beautiful and well done. I think my favorite essay was definitely THE LEAVING SEASON where Kelly McMasters explores the difference between living somewhere temporarily versus somewhere permanently. I also loved her explorations of countryside life and of people that inhabit the area, giving them complexity that is lacking in other tales. While I wasn't able to relate to a lot of essay parts, I definitely think I will get more out of the book at a later time, because this is a book one will want to re-read over and over just to explore the language and lessons learned.
This was given for review
4 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)
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