elseship: an unrequited affair

by Tree Abraham

An experimental and artistic portrait recounting, describing, and creating meaning from the year that followed a friendship confronted by unrequited love

This story begins where most end. When Tree Abraham, who identifies as queer and asexual, falls in love with her housemate who does not reciprocate the feeling. Instead of breaking up, they keep going. elseship deftly and courageously recounts the starts and stops of a transitioning relationship from housemates and friends into an undefined elseship. 

But this is not a book that plays both sides. Having recorded the experience in real time, Abraham combines personal entries with illustrations, photos, and thought-maps all organized within eight Ancient Greek categories of love. elseship is not only Abraham’s side of the story, which is written with reverence, searching honesty, and integral curiosity, it’s also the manifestation of the absence of an unrequited "To endure our complexity I had to actively solder facets of us into a meaningful narrative. That year I needed this story, I still do."

Abraham’s prose matches the serious play of Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, with the illuminating and reframing capacities of Angela Chen’s Ace. It is not afraid of reference, collaboration, memory, or associative thought, often allowing language itself to dictate the direction of meaning. Through the eight Ancient Greek categories of love, Abraham deconstructs the heteronormative—canon which sees only platonic or romantic—by detailing the beauty in mania, the eros in pain, eventually giving way to a new language, to describe the love of elses. 

elseship is a travelog exploring terrifying, lonely, uncharted territories of the heart, and a glimpse into a mind mapping pathways that probe the edges of an eroding boundary of romantic love. It is a deeply specific yet universal story of modern love that will accompany and enlighten anyone who’s been in any kind of complicated “ship” at any time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Queer, LGBT, Adult, Friendship

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2025

Reviews

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a strange book. Very often an author’s self absorption and self indulgence becomes a book’s pitfall, however this one sort of broke through that barrier. I think I’m slightly reckoning with living in an era where being sincere is immediately captured by the notion and disparagement of “cringe,” so a book that consumes itself with introspections on unrequited love felt totally confrontational with cringe to spectate that part of someone.

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tree Abraham’s ELSESHIP is unlike anything I’ve ever read. Abraham recounts a tale of unrequited love between her and her housemate via striking prose and mixed media visuals. Abraham’s background as an artist really shines here. The inclusions of handwritten notes, drawings, and photographs make ELSESHIP feel like a window into her brain. This book serves as both an emotional autopsy of the heart and a case study of true unconditional love. “Love” may be an undefinable subject, but Abraham gives us a new vocabulary to contextualize it through and a new reverence for those who occupy our hearts.

Thank you to Penguin Random House and Soft Skull Press for the ARC!

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian]

This is a well done multimedia queer/ace memoir, but just not for me. I'm going to donate it to the library book sale and hopefully it will find its reader!

[Anna Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

the writing style is… emotionally gluttonous and surprisingly wayward. I tired of her desire to make every sentence hard hitting and deep - like each was trying to be the biggest revelation we’d encountered yet. I instead wanted her to pull a little longer at some of the threads, since many were interesting and relatable. I think there’s some degree of translatable fodder, a few topics to use as jumping off points, but the material itself doesn’t have a depth to dig into alone.

[karissa✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

pretentious as all hell. i wanted to love this so badly T-T

[Dannie · Rating 5 out of 5]

firstly, mixed media books should be way more popular

secondly, the research, self awareness, processing, thoughts, and desires of this book on the topic of love/unrequited love is so well done. i very much enjoyed reading and educating myself with bite sized and perfectly depicted pieces of information that also correlated to the overall theme.

i too have experienced unrequited love, from both sides. i too have written diary pages of heartache and confusion. i so very much enjoyed reading this

[hollydoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

6/5 stars
The author falls in love with her housemate who does not reciprocate the feelings.
Her autobiografical writing explores this elseland continuing to live together while also being in love for the first time. It's an embrace of a relationship to each other outside of the box.

"I know that all the things I love about you are because of me. It's because of how I love myself that I'm able to recognize the particularities within you. I know that loving you and all the things opened up a space for me to love others more deeply and to keep loving all the everything elses in life too"

"I used to trust that when I felt connection with someone it must also be felt by them. But your certain rejection felt like an authorative wisdom that negated mine. I assume you must know yourself and how we don't fit in a way that I'm unable to see"

"What does it taste like?
Love? No, not love, my father is asking me what the chocolate tastes like. The chocolate tastes like chocolate but that isn't what he's asking. He wants to know what else it tastes like. I say they taste like October, like climbing a tree in a rainforest. Like blue. It tastes like blue?
He wants me to identify other foods that it tastes like beside chocolate, but I can't because the only ingridients in the samples are cacao and sugar. (...) I discribe what the taste conjures in me."

Rarely I've enjoyed reading a book so much.
I read it slowly for it to never end.
I can identify with the author's way of experiencing the world.

I can also identify with exploring relationship & love outside the box & how love expands us & makes us better.

[Coby Friesen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not expect to come across this little gem of an experiment. I was doing my returns at the bookstore and took a second to the read the back and knew I probably needed to read this. Never before have I read something that so similarly traverses what I’m about to do. Forest’s situation is very much her own and I love the utter specificity to this project…but the universality of a love unrequited was very relatable. And the commitment to not end that relationship too. As I’m about to venture into my own version of this I am inspired to keep going, to keep being specific, keep being honest and vulnerable. Even though my situation is different than Forests, it’s always nice to know you’re not the only one who feels things❤️

[Merrell Whitten · Rating 4 out of 5]

an exploration of the many different forms of love and longing and what that looks like when love is unrequited. beautiful and personal and contemplative! I loved!

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A philosophical project that charts varying degrees of distance and closeness between two people while exploring the limits of language in naming different types of love. Abraham catches feelings for her roommate and deconstructs those feelings through text-based artworks, dictionary definitions, Ancient Greek theories of love, & analytical writing. The book had some nice descriptions of female friendship and roommate life.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a great time buddy reading ELSESHIP: an unrequited affair by tree abraham with @bookalong! What a unique book! This book is about her falling in love with her housemate who does not reciprocate the feeling but they remain friends and then an undefined elseship. I really enjoyed the writing style that combined photos, graphics, charts, maps and footnotes. I enjoyed the exploration of friendship, love in different forms, and this specific relationship. Tree is also a book designer and her artistic eye is evident from the cover and throughout this book. This work blurs literary form.
Back in May I attended a great virtual conversation with Upstart & Crow and Tree discussing this book. I loved Tree’s first book Cyclettes too!

Thank you to Bookhug Press for my copy!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Abraham explore her love for her housemate through the prisms of eight types of love, there is much to reflect upon as a reader from preconceptions of what society thinks about love and how to adjust one’s own ideas. I think Abraham walks a certain line with the friend she is enamored with, but her pure curiosity about the subject of love powers the book through her words and images. I was captivated, and spent time while reading sharing passages with my own friends whom I love very much.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man I am so good at choosing books.

[A. Giorgi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won a physical copy of this book in a giveaway. It was extremely serendipitous. As an asexual person who used to struggle with unrequited love, this one struck me hard. It's a particular brand of heartache that I logically knew I shared with somebody out there, but I'd never seen it put to words like this. While all of that is behind me now, younger me feels validated and would like to thank the author.

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really lovely portrait of a love, that takes many forms. Elseship is made up of vignettes that are woven together - categorized into different types of love eros, agape, philautia, ludus, philia, mania, pragma. Tree Abraham extrapolates on each of these while also applying her own relationship with her roommate to each. I felt particularly charmed by Abraham’s list making. The book reads like a diary at times, including drawings, and artifacts from Abraham's life. Reading this reminded me a lot of Leanne Shapton's Swimming Studies (one of my favs). I'm very thankful for the advanced copy and excited to pick up a new copy on 1/28/25.

[Fiorella Grandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, a beautiful work of mixed media trying to explore the concept of unrequited loved. I loved the organization into the different types of words referencing types of love.
There are parts of this that read a bit like a toxic infatuation— but I think we have all been there are some point in time, and few of us use to create art. Author is clearly a master wordsmith. Took me back to a time when I was in a similar situation. I’m curious how the author would evolve this feelings if the book had been written 10-15 years after the incidence.

[Sam Goldberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

maybe 3.75? very cool style but dragged a bit in parts

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

validating to the way queer people & young people & young, queer people make homes with those around them. the blobish relationships you find yourself in with the people who pick you up from the airport or wash dishes with you or take you to the hospital. this book screams "THAT IS REAL. WHAT YOU ARE DOING IS SOMETHING."

Abraham then takes on the formidable task of dissecting that big "SOMETHING." I will say, I did not always go with them in their exploration. Some windy pathways were too heady for me but i appreciated them nonetheless. this book expanded my view of what long form writing can look like.

tender & thought provoking

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book in the beginning, and I made it my entire personality. Tree Abraham’s precision in excavating and articulating her feelings really spoke to me, and gave me this language for the obscure ways I have felt before. I love the mixed media style of the book. It made me start drawing things, and creatively inspired me. I was savoring it, reading a few pages in the mornings for almost a month.

Unfortunately, by the end, it started to lose steam for me. I think it suffers from a sort of terminal uniqueness, as if she thinks she’s the only one to fall in love with her friend and continue to be friends with them. There’s a certain amount of this that you need to make art, but I think she overshot a bit. I have a lot of compassion for this, as I think I’ve felt this way too when I’m in an unrequited situation (nobody loves like I do, etc.), but I found it frustrating to read so much of!

This book also contains *several* mentions of diet culture nonsense, a personal pet peeve of mine, so beware.

[Roxane Dumontheil · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was an interesting read.... though kinda weird because i feel like i've been on the receiving end of this.... so reading from the perspective of the 'in-love' one who desperately wants something was unnerving. i liked the author's exploration of language + the way the book was divided into the different types of love (per the Ancient Greeks) though i did find it really repetitive especially towards the end. the mixed-media aspect was also fun. hard to really relate to the author and her predicament because of what i started with + she is objectively pretty annoying and super pretentious. not sure i would recommend to anyone unless they were going through that and/or really interested in language.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could this be the most romantic book I've ever read? Chewy and delicious and honest and painful and joyful and bitter and sweet. I just loved it. I'm so sad it's over that I might have to read Abraham's book about riding bikes even though there is nothing I relate to less than a love of bike-riding.

[Sascha Deng · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I just grew out of this phase of obsessive and all consuming first love, high school/freshman year me would have eaten this up

[Fern · Rating 4 out of 5]

whoooooof. i have mixed feelings about this! but mostly good?

i will start by saying that there is absolutely no question that tree is an incredible writer and should continue writing more books (if that is something that tree wants). i think this is also a very brave and vulnerable book to write.

(also sorry i keep saying "tree" instead of "abraham", it's just that tree is such a cool name)

the entire time i was reading this, i was wondering so much about the object of tree's love. and trying to put myself in their shoes. because if someone wrote this book about me, it would kinda freak me tf out! and cause me to run for the hills. which i guess speaks to how special the object of tree's love is/was, that she didn't run from any of it. (though i am dying to know how she received this book, not that it is, of course, any of my business). their dynamic is quite difficult for me to wrap my head around, which i think is the point. that's what makes this an elseship. and that is the point of reading: to cultivate empathy and compassion and understanding for perspectives that do not align with our own.

so i oscillated between feelings of overwhelm and curiosity and acceptance/ease.

with that being said, in other ways, i think tree and i are quite similar.

tree writes, "I think my love story isn't worth telling because it's not relatable and therefore not desirable" (pp. 117).

no, it is in fact extremely important to tell. there is an extreme dearth of literature or representation of any persuasion about people living on/along the ace spectrum. so it is important a) for the people who can't relate, to LEARN and cultivate that aforementioned empathy and compassion and understanding, and b) for the people who *do* relate, to feel seen. to have analogues. to feel a sense of kinship. and not only in the context of asexuality, but in the context of queerness in general. we absolutely need more examples of non-normative relationships in our media, especially now.

some quotes that moved me (concentrated at the end of the book, lol):

"Unrequited, I could be most fully alone amid the tidal feelings, which mimicked the closest relationship I could recognize--that with my artist self And just as was my process to every other meaningful confrontation with life, I wrote art out of the love in order to own it" (pp. 248).

"The nature of love is absurd. It doesn't matter how much you consciously want something; you can't will yourself to feel what you don't. You can want something all the way and it still won't be enough to feel it all that way" (pp. 256).

"The act of loving is greater than the act of being loved. And what are we here for if not to be love?" (pp. 262)

anyways, i'm glad this book exists. i'm glad i learned the word queerplatonic.

and i'm glad for all the fun facts and book recommendations.

oh, and yes, i totally bought this book because of the cover.

[Izy Carney · Rating 2 out of 5]

I initially bought this book for Jess but wanted to read it first. BOY I’m glad I did. Jess, I think you’d hate this book. There a pieces of wisdom about love and friendship and all the different spaces between, but I gotta say, the author and their unrequited lover seem like they’d be completely insufferable in real life. A lot of the writing made me cringe either for being unbelievably millennial (‘I did a thing’ ‘we’re meant to feel all the feels’ ‘Everglowing.’ Geeeez) or for falling into habits of a poorly executed memoir-essay (the narrative reads more like a paranoid conspiracy theory than a flowing connection of life anecdotes with quotes from other sources/authors). The constant definitions at the bottom of the page killed me. Let’s leave this genre to Maggie please. I did like the pictures though.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

LOVED the first 100 pages. It was just too repetitive for me after that, but that’s the cycle of love right? The book is beautiful in the way that even the structure of the pages represents the internal torment of this common but unknown feeling.

I could relate so many of my own situations to chapters of this book. I think it also was too much for me because it was bringing up memories and feelings I don’t wanna have anymore.

So it was a love/hate relationship with this book, but special nonetheless.

[Venneh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I genuinely wonder if the author's ex roommate knows about this book (I hope they do). This is essentially a mourning of a rejection and of possible futures that didn't happen, but I will note that if I read this from someone I used to room with but moved out because I didn't want to be in a romantic relationship with them, that I might be a bit concerned about that person. Still a hell of a work, both artistically and prose wise.

[Elizabeth Sanders · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this is an interesting book in its exploration of different forms of love and, in particular, in its reflections on love from an asexual point of view. As an aroace myself, that part was the most intriguing to me. Unfortunately, I found the writing dense and overly floral. I do think there is an audience for this book. People who are drawn to introspection and rumination will likely enjoy this. It just wasn't for me.

[Rachel Breault · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really wanted to like this but it felt like it was trying too hard to write in a unique way and to sound deep rather than (for me personally) finding it to actually resonate or hit on human emotion. By the end I had to wrap up quick as I was getting irritated by the author at that point. That being said it had an interesting concept and I think there's not exactly a book that hits on the similar myriad of topics that would be comprable.

[EvaDerksen · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book was delightful and gave words and meaning to the most impossibly un-understandable things that can exist between people. i bristled at its determined sincerity and outpourings of sentimentality but i suppose it's a part of the everythingness of it all. as much as i bristled, i found the radical honesty endearing. so i liked it. i am also just a sucker for unreasonably florid writing. beautiful

ps this book is just FUN. pictures and maps and diagrams i eat that up

[lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

the ludus chapter is so fun- glittery, silly, play. kinda how i envisioned this book, along with the cover.

this was nice; some sections felt a bit too disjointed for me… i didn’t love the parts that started to feel more like an essay or paper than a memoir. but overall it was a nice insight into a work attempting to unravel the workings of love.