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Gulp, Swallow: Essays on change
Memoiric essays on who we were and how we have changed
What happens when who you are is different to who you imagined you'd be?
When her son was three, Brooke Boland was diagnosed with depression. She went back to find where it all started – the panic attacks, the dissociation – in the early days of motherhood. When she found it difficult to read or write.
In this wide-ranging collection of essays Boland moves on from the person she was and writes to understand who she is now. She swims with sharks, falls in love with a rabbit, and watches her father fight for his life. She is a newcomer in a small regional town and a mother, but what else? She writes about family and friends, life and mortality, memory and forgetting, and along the way she finds her voice again.
This book is for anyone who has felt unmoored. It is about the unremarkable in-between, the way we try to build a home from nothing, the dirty dishes and the loads of washing. The uncertainty and the love. But written in sparkling prose with a sly and wry tone that is illuminating about the everyday as it pitches for a rich and fulfilled life.
What happens when who you are is different to who you imagined you'd be?
When her son was three, Brooke Boland was diagnosed with depression. She went back to find where it all started – the panic attacks, the dissociation – in the early days of motherhood. When she found it difficult to read or write.
In this wide-ranging collection of essays Boland moves on from the person she was and writes to understand who she is now. She swims with sharks, falls in love with a rabbit, and watches her father fight for his life. She is a newcomer in a small regional town and a mother, but what else? She writes about family and friends, life and mortality, memory and forgetting, and along the way she finds her voice again.
This book is for anyone who has felt unmoored. It is about the unremarkable in-between, the way we try to build a home from nothing, the dirty dishes and the loads of washing. The uncertainty and the love. But written in sparkling prose with a sly and wry tone that is illuminating about the everyday as it pitches for a rich and fulfilled life.
133 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 5, 2024
About the author
Brooke Boland
3 books3 followersBrooke Boland recently completed her PhD at The University of NSW and works as a freelance writer.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 28, 2026
3.5 🌟
Якщо любите жіночу есеїстику в сенсі рефлексивної прози — раджу)
Якщо любите жіночу есеїстику в сенсі рефлексивної прози — раджу)
April 6, 2025
Hadn't read Boland before, this was a good introduction. I enjoyed how her short essays made me thing about change, passing of time (eg in one story she talks of kids l8 leaving school thinking about the possibilities of life - and here am I with 2 weeks holidays excited with the possibility!! I'm a bit older). Made me think how time is the same, but also different, depending on your perspective. (Less years ahead of me than behind). Some resonated more than others of course, however I enjoyed the overall book, reflective, but not morose.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews