The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place

by Andrew Bertaina

Andrew Bertaina is going through a mid-life crisis: failed marriage, child-rearing, self-doubt, ennui, the works. Naturally, Bertaina does what any of us would do; he draws inspiration from the poster boy of mid-life crisis chroniclers, the 16th-century essayist Michele de Montaigne, channeling misgivings into meditations, lostness into longing. The essays in The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place deal with a variety of timeless and universal topics: e.g., how to woo a French woman on a train, male caregiving, how to cannibalize your spouse, and the riddle of time. The essays promise no answers. They do, however, strive to capture the beauty that lingers in a life passing all too quickly.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

184 pages, Paperback

Published May 28, 2024

About the author

Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection, The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus Books), and the short story collection One Person Away From You (2021), which won the Moon City Short Fiction Award. His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Witness Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, and The Best American Poetry. He has an MFA from American University in Washington, DC.

Reviews

[Maddy Sever]

i don’t have kids and i’ve never been married BUT my idle thoughts are in fact existential in nature. and i finally need to read seneca.

incredible voice from bertaina. on baths was the standout for me.

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Body is a Temporary Gathering Place" by Andrew Bertaina is a stunning collection of essays that meditates on the passage of time, the nuances of parenting, and the intricacies of the creative process. Bertaina infuses even the smallest moments with profound meaning, and I enjoyed how he blended bits of philosophy and history into his deeply relatable lived experiences. A perfect read for a rainy, cozy day when you want to contemplate life. Standouts for me were "On Trains," "On Uncertainty," and "On Baths."

Favorite quotes:

from "On Trains" - "The only rational proposal is that we all continually board trains to cities we've never been in so we might occasionally escape ourselves."

from "On Uncertainty" - "We sit in silence trying out uncertainty together... I want to remind them that it's okay to not know yet, to fail at persuasion, to burn up, to shipwreck, to wander the garrulous green seas until you're hallucinating mermaids."

[Cody Shrum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Bertaina’s stunning debut essay collection took me a while to read because every essay made me pause to contemplate my own life. Reading these essays left me feeling more in tune with humanity and the universe than I had been before flipping the first page. Bertaina writes vulnerably and beautifully about fatherhood, being a human, art, the self, nature, and most of all what this big question mark of life means as a writer traversing this world, looking for meaning and navigating love and relationships.

[Nick Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of meditative essays on fatherhood, marriage, and the self, Bertaina is at his best in his second book. Each essay is incredibly personal, holding nothing back, bearing all. It's funny. It's deep. It will glue you to your seat pondering your own life, finding those strange connections between the internal and external worlds that make up a life.
Read it on a train
Read it in the bath
Read it in an outdoor shower overlooking a graveyard
just read it.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Bertaina is a virtuoso and master of style. There’s one essay in this book titled, This Essay is About Everything, and I feel like it perfectly sums up Bertaina’s mastery of the digressive essay. His narratives meander through astute observations and various musings on life, deftly walking us through the existential mire of relationships, parenthood, and middle age with a charming blend of levity and pathos.

[Chad]

Proustian in that Bertaina wants to detail everything, to imbue it all with meaning. These essays aren't memoirs, they're ruminations on the big questions: death, success, art, meaning. If you are the kind of person who worries about these things, you'll find something to relate to here.

It's simultaneously ambitious and also rather bites sized. Recommend reading by a fire or with a nice cup of tea.

[Mike Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of essays contemplating life, being present and hope of things being better if you put in the work.

[Caroline Hagood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I deeply enjoyed this lyrical book that glosses Montaigne and goes to unexpected places. The Body is a Temporary Gathering Place is wryly funny, touching, and thought-provoking.

[Nina Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely personal collection of essays that touch on marriage, raising kids, and the self-doubt that blossoms upon middle age as if fed by life led to that point. Each essay is filled with concepts, ideas and thoughts that you will want to commit to memory, share with your friends and highlight for posterity. Andrew Bertaina's book is a revelation and I find myself coming back to his work for the insights they carry.