What do you think?
Rate this book
Trying: A Memoir
If you’re writing about your life in real time, are you inherently fucked?
Over the years that Chloé Caldwell had been married and hoping to conceive a child, she’d read everything she could find on infertility. But no memoir or message board reflected her experience; for one thing, most stories ended with in vitro fertilization, a baby, or both. She wanted to offer something different.
Caldwell began a book. She imagined a selective journal about her experience coping with stasis and uncertainty. Is it time to quit coffee, find a new acupuncturist, get another blood test? Her questions extended to her job at a clothing boutique and to her teaching and writing practice. Why do people love equating publishing books with giving birth? What is the right amount of money to spend on pants or fertility treatments? How much trying is enough? She ignored the sense that something else in her life was wrong that was not on the page . . . until she extracted a confession from her husband.
Broken by betrayal but freed from domesticity, Caldwell felt reawakened, to long-buried desires, to her queer identity, to pleasure and possibility. She kept writing, making sense of her new reality as it took shape. With the candor, irreverence, and heart that have made Caldwell’s work beloved, Trying intimately captures a self in a continuous process of becoming—and the mysterious ways that writing informs that process.
Over the years that Chloé Caldwell had been married and hoping to conceive a child, she’d read everything she could find on infertility. But no memoir or message board reflected her experience; for one thing, most stories ended with in vitro fertilization, a baby, or both. She wanted to offer something different.
Caldwell began a book. She imagined a selective journal about her experience coping with stasis and uncertainty. Is it time to quit coffee, find a new acupuncturist, get another blood test? Her questions extended to her job at a clothing boutique and to her teaching and writing practice. Why do people love equating publishing books with giving birth? What is the right amount of money to spend on pants or fertility treatments? How much trying is enough? She ignored the sense that something else in her life was wrong that was not on the page . . . until she extracted a confession from her husband.
Broken by betrayal but freed from domesticity, Caldwell felt reawakened, to long-buried desires, to her queer identity, to pleasure and possibility. She kept writing, making sense of her new reality as it took shape. With the candor, irreverence, and heart that have made Caldwell’s work beloved, Trying intimately captures a self in a continuous process of becoming—and the mysterious ways that writing informs that process.
199 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 5, 2025
44 people are currently reading
5129 people want to read
About the author
Chloé Caldwell
12 books789 followersChloé Caldwell is the author of the national bestseller, WOMEN (Harper Perennial, 2024).
Her book TRYING will be published by Graywolf Press on August 5th, 2025.
She is also the author of the essay collections I'll Tell You in Person, Legs Get Led Astray, and the memoir The Red Zone: A Love Story.
Chloe's work has been published in The New York Times, Bon Appétit, The Cut, Vogue, and many anthologies, including SLUTS, Without a Net, and Goodbye To All That.
Chloe teaches creative nonfiction online and hosts retreats and offers writing support at scrappyliterary.com.
Her book TRYING will be published by Graywolf Press on August 5th, 2025.
She is also the author of the essay collections I'll Tell You in Person, Legs Get Led Astray, and the memoir The Red Zone: A Love Story.
Chloe's work has been published in The New York Times, Bon Appétit, The Cut, Vogue, and many anthologies, including SLUTS, Without a Net, and Goodbye To All That.
Chloe teaches creative nonfiction online and hosts retreats and offers writing support at scrappyliterary.com.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 134 reviews
September 6, 2024
Hmm. I began writing this book in Messejana, Portugal in December 2021 at a residency. It was called 36 Notes on Trying. Later it was called Orphaned Passages: Notes on Trying. My editor and others and I ended up referring to it as "the trying book" so decided to simply call it, Trying. I like how it goes with my book, Women, Women Trying or Trying Women.
(Fun fact: there's a meta Goodreads break up in Trying, you'll see.)
My editor and I have been describing the book as a book that goes from black and white into color. a friend who read said it feels like a simmering until the explosion. I've also described it as "like a choose your own adventure book, but linear" which genuinely doesn't make sense to anyone but me.
This book is sort of weird and experimental. I feel lucky to be publishing it on a weird and experimental press like Graywolf. It's the perfect home. This is the only book of mine I've written in real time. It's in three Acts, and each Act captures a different tone. I sold the book under one premise but a year into writing the book I got divorced, and of course that had to be reflected. It also turned into a craft book of sorts, roasting a little of the publishing industry as well as writing about writing, writing exercises, and my experience teaching writing; how the subconscious part of us that writes, often knows answers to questions that the conscious part of us does not.
I omitted many personal details and the book is fragmentary in nature. Each vignette is intentional.Instead of a book where we added more and more; I wrote a ton then cut most of it. The books moves from hetero life to queer life which is cool to me. There's exploration of divorce, unexplained infertility, queer family making, disenfranchised grief, ambiguous loss, sex as escapism, sex as mental health and getting back into your body.
The book feels like the older sibling to Women. I could have kept working on this book another year, but I'm a firm believer in also letting the book be what it is supposed to be in a certain time.
Some people think books should only be written after getting a ton of perspective; I couldn't disagree more. "Trying what?" someone recently said to me,"Trying life?" Yeah, I said.
(Fun fact: there's a meta Goodreads break up in Trying, you'll see.)
My editor and I have been describing the book as a book that goes from black and white into color. a friend who read said it feels like a simmering until the explosion. I've also described it as "like a choose your own adventure book, but linear" which genuinely doesn't make sense to anyone but me.
This book is sort of weird and experimental. I feel lucky to be publishing it on a weird and experimental press like Graywolf. It's the perfect home. This is the only book of mine I've written in real time. It's in three Acts, and each Act captures a different tone. I sold the book under one premise but a year into writing the book I got divorced, and of course that had to be reflected. It also turned into a craft book of sorts, roasting a little of the publishing industry as well as writing about writing, writing exercises, and my experience teaching writing; how the subconscious part of us that writes, often knows answers to questions that the conscious part of us does not.
I omitted many personal details and the book is fragmentary in nature. Each vignette is intentional.Instead of a book where we added more and more; I wrote a ton then cut most of it. The books moves from hetero life to queer life which is cool to me. There's exploration of divorce, unexplained infertility, queer family making, disenfranchised grief, ambiguous loss, sex as escapism, sex as mental health and getting back into your body.
The book feels like the older sibling to Women. I could have kept working on this book another year, but I'm a firm believer in also letting the book be what it is supposed to be in a certain time.
Some people think books should only be written after getting a ton of perspective; I couldn't disagree more. "Trying what?" someone recently said to me,"Trying life?" Yeah, I said.
May 6, 2025
i had the pleasure and joy of reading an early arc of TRYING last year and i can solidly say this is Chloé Caldwell at her best. moving and heartbreaking and hilarious and so very very human. i cry all the time at movies but never while reading books - Trying had me in real tears. a massive compliment. i cannot wait for august!!!!!
December 9, 2025
legally had to look up what i rated splinters and rate this lower bcs it was so similar to (consumed with & refusing to interrogate the self through divorce) but worse than (more emotionally shallow and poorly written) splinters. i would have quit this earlier if it wasn't such a fast and annoying read, so i have only myself to blame.
i don't think it's right to write books where each page is a separate long-form tweet, unless you are tremendously good at short-form prose, and funny, but she is not; particularly when you are constantly quoting vaguely inspirational & online writers / friends, this does just read as a series of texts from the most annoying person in your social circles. i think memoir particularly should be somewhat invested in reflection or meaning-making and i don't think it's enough to document 20-30 people telling you "you used to seem so dead and now you seem alive."
it's great to have a renaissance of your queer identity later in life and i'm happy you had all that poly sex in ridgewood but i do think at thirty-seven you should be somewhat past finding self-asserting conclusions in things like "straight people don't feel eros and playfulness the way we do" although it's true that everyone universally tends to say this is one month after their straight divorce.
i don't think it's right to write books where each page is a separate long-form tweet, unless you are tremendously good at short-form prose, and funny, but she is not; particularly when you are constantly quoting vaguely inspirational & online writers / friends, this does just read as a series of texts from the most annoying person in your social circles. i think memoir particularly should be somewhat invested in reflection or meaning-making and i don't think it's enough to document 20-30 people telling you "you used to seem so dead and now you seem alive."
it's great to have a renaissance of your queer identity later in life and i'm happy you had all that poly sex in ridgewood but i do think at thirty-seven you should be somewhat past finding self-asserting conclusions in things like "straight people don't feel eros and playfulness the way we do" although it's true that everyone universally tends to say this is one month after their straight divorce.
July 24, 2025
What a delight!
Trying begins with various episodes related to treating infertility, from humorous discussions of the vaginal ultrasound "dildo cam" to grappling with a continued rejection of IVF while others consider it their "only choice." So much of this story is about choice and agency in a situation where so commonly women feel they have none. And in a great attack of her agency, halfway through Caldwell's experience of writing her memoir she learns about her husband's betrayal. The second half of the book is focused less on the pursuit of creating life and more on the pursuit of living her own. That's not to suggest this memoir is a rejection of motherhood, but instead an open-minded, queer perspective on what it means to have agency, to heal, and to cultivate familial relations.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Graywolf for the e-arc.
Trying begins with various episodes related to treating infertility, from humorous discussions of the vaginal ultrasound "dildo cam" to grappling with a continued rejection of IVF while others consider it their "only choice." So much of this story is about choice and agency in a situation where so commonly women feel they have none. And in a great attack of her agency, halfway through Caldwell's experience of writing her memoir she learns about her husband's betrayal. The second half of the book is focused less on the pursuit of creating life and more on the pursuit of living her own. That's not to suggest this memoir is a rejection of motherhood, but instead an open-minded, queer perspective on what it means to have agency, to heal, and to cultivate familial relations.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Graywolf for the e-arc.
October 23, 2025
feel like she really coulda gone deeper on the divorce and the gay stuff
January 31, 2025
A process book by all definitions. Chloe Caldwell's Trying is made up of interconnected vignettes about the act of trying to get pregnant and also about the act of writing the book that she is presenting to us. Caldwell rides the line between heart breaking and funny, in that way that is true to life itself (at least the way I live my life). Her references are hyper-contemporary, which I found delightful - she references across media from the tv show Hacks to the newly published Sandwich. As discouraging and difficult as the act of trying to conceive can be (and that is never brushed under the rug) the book itself feels hopeful. I'm very thankful and honored that Greywolf sent me this arc and recommend picking up a copy for yourself on August 5, 2025.
January 16, 2025
I’ve loved all of Caldwell’s books but think this is the best yet. I learned so much from this book about subjects I thought I knew. This book is hilarious at times and heartbreaking at others. I finished it in a day last week and can’t stop thinking about it.
July 6, 2025
thank you to NetGalley and ESPECIALLY Graywolf Press for the advanced digital copy.
this precious little memoir is available August 5th, 2025.
--
i ate this up faster than i thought possible. trying is raw, nonlinear, smart, and deeply human. it's a memoir told in sharp, sometimes funny, often heartbreaking fragments. the vignettes that build slowly until you realize you've been sitting in something much deeper than you expected. what starts as a book about struggles with age and infertility becomes something much bigger: a story about shifting identity, queerness, betrayal, grief, consumerism, and trying, really trying, to find meaning in it all.
chloe caldwell writes about the cultural expectation that people with uteruses should be either dreaming of giving birth, actively pregnant, or raising children. she doesn't just challenge this, she interrogates how it's weaponized. how not wanting kids is treated like a failure. how being unable to have them is cast as tragedy. how age, especially for people with uteruses, becomes a countdown clock, while men get to coast, often leaving the child-rearing behind.
there's fascinating critique in here about heteronormativity within the fertility industry, how straight couples can jump right to IVF while queer couples are expected to "prove" infertility through multiple rounds of less effective treatments like IUI. there's also a brilliant metaphor tucked throughout the book about a boutique selling 'life-changing pants'. the pants don't fit everyone. they're advertised as inclusive, but they aren't. just like life, there's no one-size-fits-all. and no purchase, no herbal tea, no miracle diet will fix or change something if it's unfixable.
caldwell also touches on how infertility invites unsolicited advice: cut out caffeine, try acupuncture, take these supplements. it's part of a larger pattern - consumerism dressed up as wellness, fix-it culture disguised as care. the book doesn't scream about these issues. it just shows you how heavy it all gets when the trying leads nowhere.
the middle of the book contains a rupture. an infidelity, a divorce. the narrative shifts. caldwell finds herself moving from a hetero marriage into a new world of autonomy. the title still fits. she's trying to understand what she wants. trying to reclaim parts of herself that got buried. trying to write, trying to live, trying to start again.
there's a beautiful, piercing thread in here about how painful it is to be happy for others when your own grief is so big it eats you from the inside out. it doesn't make you cruel. it makes you human. caldwell handles that tenderness so well, without moralizing or apologizing. she just tells the truth.
and the details are SO good. there's pop culture scattered throughout like little gifts: hacks, MUNA, search party. it's specific and current in a way that grounds the book in time and place. the writing is clean, sharp, but not emotionless. it simmers. it stings. it lands hard.
the format - fragmented, meandering, vignette-based - won't be for everyone, but i found it perfect for a subject as slippery as this. trying doesn't offer neat resolutions. it doesn't tie things up. it just invites you to sit inside the mess of not knowing. and for anyone who's ever had to rewrite their life mid-sentence, this will feel like being seen.
this precious little memoir is available August 5th, 2025.
--
i ate this up faster than i thought possible. trying is raw, nonlinear, smart, and deeply human. it's a memoir told in sharp, sometimes funny, often heartbreaking fragments. the vignettes that build slowly until you realize you've been sitting in something much deeper than you expected. what starts as a book about struggles with age and infertility becomes something much bigger: a story about shifting identity, queerness, betrayal, grief, consumerism, and trying, really trying, to find meaning in it all.
chloe caldwell writes about the cultural expectation that people with uteruses should be either dreaming of giving birth, actively pregnant, or raising children. she doesn't just challenge this, she interrogates how it's weaponized. how not wanting kids is treated like a failure. how being unable to have them is cast as tragedy. how age, especially for people with uteruses, becomes a countdown clock, while men get to coast, often leaving the child-rearing behind.
there's fascinating critique in here about heteronormativity within the fertility industry, how straight couples can jump right to IVF while queer couples are expected to "prove" infertility through multiple rounds of less effective treatments like IUI. there's also a brilliant metaphor tucked throughout the book about a boutique selling 'life-changing pants'. the pants don't fit everyone. they're advertised as inclusive, but they aren't. just like life, there's no one-size-fits-all. and no purchase, no herbal tea, no miracle diet will fix or change something if it's unfixable.
caldwell also touches on how infertility invites unsolicited advice: cut out caffeine, try acupuncture, take these supplements. it's part of a larger pattern - consumerism dressed up as wellness, fix-it culture disguised as care. the book doesn't scream about these issues. it just shows you how heavy it all gets when the trying leads nowhere.
the middle of the book contains a rupture. an infidelity, a divorce. the narrative shifts. caldwell finds herself moving from a hetero marriage into a new world of autonomy. the title still fits. she's trying to understand what she wants. trying to reclaim parts of herself that got buried. trying to write, trying to live, trying to start again.
there's a beautiful, piercing thread in here about how painful it is to be happy for others when your own grief is so big it eats you from the inside out. it doesn't make you cruel. it makes you human. caldwell handles that tenderness so well, without moralizing or apologizing. she just tells the truth.
and the details are SO good. there's pop culture scattered throughout like little gifts: hacks, MUNA, search party. it's specific and current in a way that grounds the book in time and place. the writing is clean, sharp, but not emotionless. it simmers. it stings. it lands hard.
the format - fragmented, meandering, vignette-based - won't be for everyone, but i found it perfect for a subject as slippery as this. trying doesn't offer neat resolutions. it doesn't tie things up. it just invites you to sit inside the mess of not knowing. and for anyone who's ever had to rewrite their life mid-sentence, this will feel like being seen.
November 24, 2025
3.5 stars.
August 24, 2025
She’s so right about everything 😭
August 16, 2025
first person to come off well in a (part) divorce memoir
Read
September 13, 2025I’m still waiting on more fiction by her. Apparently there’s an After Women sequel in the works…
July 17, 2025
My cousin is awesome
June 1, 2025
As a member of Graywolf's Galley Club, I received an arc of Trying, slated for release on August 5, 2025.
[2.5 stars]
I had similar issues with Trying that I did with Women, Caldwell's novella that I read earlier this year. I just don't think Caldwell's style of storytelling, her authorial voice, is for me. I wish more time had been spent exploring the themes Caldwell approached in this memoir, swapped for the quirky one liners straight out of Girls and fourth wall breaks that just read a bit self aggrandizing and cringy.
There are some emotional moments as Caldwell reflects on her grief with infertility, but these moments tend to get repetitive as the memoir continues. (What grief isn't cyclical? you might say, and that's fair.)
Easy enough to read, as I got through it in two sittings over the course of one day, but not one I'll really reflect on by the end of the year.
[2.5 stars]
I had similar issues with Trying that I did with Women, Caldwell's novella that I read earlier this year. I just don't think Caldwell's style of storytelling, her authorial voice, is for me. I wish more time had been spent exploring the themes Caldwell approached in this memoir, swapped for the quirky one liners straight out of Girls and fourth wall breaks that just read a bit self aggrandizing and cringy.
There are some emotional moments as Caldwell reflects on her grief with infertility, but these moments tend to get repetitive as the memoir continues. (What grief isn't cyclical? you might say, and that's fair.)
Easy enough to read, as I got through it in two sittings over the course of one day, but not one I'll really reflect on by the end of the year.
July 28, 2025
I picked up an ARC at a book fair and read it in a day. I wanted to like it more than I did. The elements are all there: style, voice, form. I felt that the first two "acts" could have been one act. I really, really did not need more on the life-changing pants store. I really, really needed more on the queer (re)awakening. The only bridge from a heterosexual divorce to queer, non-monogamous dating is two-and-a-half pages of almost unreadable stream of consciousness. Was the reader meant to have understood the narrator as queer all along? Any sort of queer awakening, especially to call it a reawakening, felt hastily assumed, left unexplored, almost as though the narrator has yet to fully explore it herself. The last act felt like tumbling down a hill. It left me a bit underwhelmed, that's all.
March 15, 2025
I really enjoyed reading this and could barely put it down! The brief exchanges, snapshots, musings, and observations about the author’s experiences with infertility, love, grief, and writing all blended seamlessly together into this smart little book - highly recommend :)
March 7, 2025
Devoured it in one sitting: phenomenal amazing and life-changing. I love this book.
July 12, 2025
a memoir told in a series of fragments and acts that details the author's experience with "trying" for a baby, then in life. for fans of loosely held narratives, creative nonfiction, and [spoiler alert] divorce novels.
though i'm typically a fan of "this sort of thing" (and chloe's other books), this fell flat for me. i failed to see how her work at "the pants store" (loup for anyone wondering) created enough of a narrative structure for the first act. i was annoyed when she said she knew she *could* give some more symbolism here or there, but basically told us she was too cool to try (!). i wanted more detail, more heart throughout, and while her obsessiveness comes through, she lacks a "why." did she love B so much she wanted to have his baby? did she imagine holding this tiny thing and responding to its every need? apparently not, though that revelation was more up to the reader to construct as her tone changed from flat to a bit...and only a bit...more animated by act three, when the clouds part and she works to change, or maybe even just accept, her life.
i still devoured in one sitting <3
ty netgalley for the ARC!
though i'm typically a fan of "this sort of thing" (and chloe's other books), this fell flat for me. i failed to see how her work at "the pants store" (loup for anyone wondering) created enough of a narrative structure for the first act. i was annoyed when she said she knew she *could* give some more symbolism here or there, but basically told us she was too cool to try (!). i wanted more detail, more heart throughout, and while her obsessiveness comes through, she lacks a "why." did she love B so much she wanted to have his baby? did she imagine holding this tiny thing and responding to its every need? apparently not, though that revelation was more up to the reader to construct as her tone changed from flat to a bit...and only a bit...more animated by act three, when the clouds part and she works to change, or maybe even just accept, her life.
i still devoured in one sitting <3
ty netgalley for the ARC!
November 26, 2025
When Chloe Caldwell started trying for a baby with her husband, she could never have imagined the road she’d end up travelling. This memoir recounts it in an often raw, sometimes funny, often heartbreaking way.
Her experiences at the fertility clinic had me wincing and then aching for her. I have first hand experience of those clinics and although it’s been a good long while since those hideous days, it still took me right back. Her descriptions and emotions are unflinching and genuine, take it from one who knows.
Trying is an unusual book, each memory revealed in vignettes, some shorter, some longer. Some may find this a little different but I actually really liked it, it felt like I was a witness to the author’s mind as she relayed musings, often randomly, relating to her circumstances. It’s split into three acts, each act defining a specific part of the author’s life. And by act two there’s a monumental change which turns everything on its head.
Trying isn’t just about infertility, although it does feature heavily. It’s about marriage and trust and betrayal and finding out who you really are, oh and life changing pants. Which everybody needs.
October 15, 2025
I inhaled this book. I don’t know if I have ever read a book in a day, but I couldn’t stop reading this one and I read it in a day. I can’t even express how refreshing and incredible it was to read a book about something I have experienced, by someone of my age/generation, with the same context I have, the same references, the same books, the same songs. Or that was how I felt about Act I, which by itself was a perfect little encapsulation of what we call TTC Hell.
The rest of the book, although it didn’t as closely align with the path of my own life lol, was just as honestly written, just as funny, felt just as true. I loved how close we as readers were to the writing process, it was fascinating. I wish more people were so-called embarrassingly writing in public. If the forces of technology have taken blogs from us, at least give us books like this.
The rest of the book, although it didn’t as closely align with the path of my own life lol, was just as honestly written, just as funny, felt just as true. I loved how close we as readers were to the writing process, it was fascinating. I wish more people were so-called embarrassingly writing in public. If the forces of technology have taken blogs from us, at least give us books like this.
November 8, 2025
i have read everything caldwell writes and i will continue to but i had some big problems with the way this book was structured. could not get into the pants of it all, though i am so grateful for any writing about working retail/any kind of working-class writing. that thread felt somewhat half-baked here, for me.
i was frustrated by the neatness of the first half (narrative neatness). and also generally, when you read everything a memoirist has written, it is hard to not try to fact-check the narrator as the book progresses (like when she talks about her history of healthy lifestyle choices and i'm like girl in your other book you were snorting heroin! no judgement but also like, salads are not the only input here...idk). still enjoyed a lot of it.
i was frustrated by the neatness of the first half (narrative neatness). and also generally, when you read everything a memoirist has written, it is hard to not try to fact-check the narrator as the book progresses (like when she talks about her history of healthy lifestyle choices and i'm like girl in your other book you were snorting heroin! no judgement but also like, salads are not the only input here...idk). still enjoyed a lot of it.
August 23, 2025
“try having nothing”
this book is sooo important for the culture!!! chloe has done it again with another niche slice of life essay memoir! i really admire chloe and her way of always finding such profound things to say about real, down to earth human experiences.
this book has it all: life changing pants, fertility treatments, gay hookups, dildo cams, divorce, grief, hope, love, loss, animal motifs, and friendship.
this book is sooo important for the culture!!! chloe has done it again with another niche slice of life essay memoir! i really admire chloe and her way of always finding such profound things to say about real, down to earth human experiences.
this book has it all: life changing pants, fertility treatments, gay hookups, dildo cams, divorce, grief, hope, love, loss, animal motifs, and friendship.
September 4, 2025
Another fave by a fave. I love Chloe so much. Her writing always hits & energizes me. A story about rediscovering an innate & intimate queerness post divorce from a man is an experience that is so close to the bone for me - I absolutely devoured Trying.
Read
October 15, 2025i finished this one sitting. i love the fragmented way of writing. i understand what its like to want something and try for something with every ounce of your being, and failing anyway
what she wanted made more sense.
but i guess you just gotta lean forward and run down the hill
what she wanted made more sense.
but i guess you just gotta lean forward and run down the hill
August 13, 2025
I've always been a chloe stan but this might be my favorite of hers. So honest and real and funny and heartbreaking. Yes I cried on the G train reading this
September 6, 2025
i read this in two days - i like this book a lot. it gives me the sensation that there are other people in the world (which i know is obvious but the book made me feel it)
October 29, 2025
Heartbreaking, mystifying, and a brazen finger up to the traditional memoir form. Couldn’t stop reading it.
Read
November 5, 2025this was sort of unsatisfying for me, but maybe because i listened to it instead of reading. the ending came up so swiftly
August 10, 2025
devoured as i do all of chloe’s books
Displaying 1 - 30 of 134 reviews