Sensitive Creatures

by Kirsten Reneau

In unflinching yet hopeful prose, this debut memoir in essays explores the most animal parts of our human nature. Discussions of various creatures in the natural world serve as portals to the painful realities Kirsten Reneau confronts in the process of breaking— and remaking— a home. Honest in their descriptions of sexual assault and its traumatic effects, these essays are at once clinical and lyrical reflections on the ways that desire can permeate our lives for better or worse, as well as how it can be channeled into a lifegiving force for women in a world often hostile to their basic needs. Sensitive Creatures ultimately is a story of darkness, resilience, and the light that still manages to crack through.

132 pages, Paperback

Published March 19, 2024

Reviews

[Teresa]

Kirsten Reneau has crafted a very fine collection of essays, honest and brutal as to the sexual traumas she’s experienced, as well as unsparing toward herself. She weaves her revelations with facts about the natural world: dolphins, cicadas, butterflies, hummingbird nests, bats, and constellations.

My favorite essay is “The Meaning of Sparrows" -- not only because I love drab birds, but because of the essay’s even deeper metaphors as the sparrows are turned into the women of a Bluebeard tale. I believe it’s the only piece written in third-person, which gives it an even profounder universal appeal.

[Amberlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kirsten Reneau navigates some tough territory with grace and wisdom. Using ideas from nature—animals, astronomy—she works to make sense of the human condition, hers and ours. She’s crafty with her metaphors and style and honest about her self and her experiences. Some of her writing feels young, but that makes sense because she is, and this is her debut essay collection.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kirsten Reneau writes autobiographical essays using metaphors of the natural world to explore themes of trauma and recovery. From the legends of cicadas to the phases of the moon, her words are beautiful in a way trauma can never be.

[Carole Duff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young writer’s debut essay collection, pondering human behavior and that of the natural world. In some ways, the collection is a coming of age through self- and other-inflicted “wreckage” then the hope of regeneration. Reneau is a talented and creative author to follow.

[Nanaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the author but the book was too flowy and rambling for me

[Cate]

I liked it