Body: My Life in Parts

by Nina B. Lichtenstein

★★★★★ “This is a brilliant new way to write a memoir... I feel enriched, and grateful to discover a different way to go through my days. I loved every word.” Abigail Thomas, author of A Three Dog Life

Body: My Life in Parts is the memoir of an ex-pat Norwegian Lutheran turned American Viking Jewess who is on a quest. This front-end Gen X’er wonders “How the hell did I end up here, now, like this?” The author uses her body to find her answers. In stand-alone but interconnected chapters (“Eyes,” “Belly,” “Breasts,” “Hands,” etc.; 16 chapters in all), body parts serve as portals toward remembrances grounded in the physical body while linking to other forms of experience, with one goal: making sense of a life that she realizes— only through writing it— has been full of reactivity and agency, despite her rarely noticing it in the moment.

A quiet, grounding book in turbulent, uncertain times, Body: My Life in Parts, shows the reader how the treasure chest that is her own body can be a source of meaningful discovery, and recovery, of meaning. This book celebrates the body as witness and recordkeeper; a most dependable collaborator in “keeping the score” and in living a more examined life.

An appendix with body memory/writing prompts is also included, serving as a guide for readers who want to explore how to re-member—bring together—their own life-building stories.

Genres: Memoir

258 pages, Paperback

Published May 27, 2025

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lichtenstein tells stories from her life by way of different parts of her body, an approach somewhat similar to Maggie O'Farrell's in I Am, I Am, I Am. It's an effective strategy for linking experiences separated by decades. The author grew up in Oslo, moved to the USA in her late teen years, and married into a Jewish family. She evokes sense memories and explores pivotal scenes from her childhood onwards, giving a clear idea of how women's bodies are objectified and how other people, including religious authorities, expected her to behave. For instance, the "Breasts" chapter considers their shifting purpose from sexual attraction to feeding babies, as in Jean Hannah Edelstein's Breasts.

There is some repetition across the essays and I didn't care for the switching between literal and metaphorical treatment of body parts (e.g., the "Nose" chapter talks about the remembered smell of fish and times when she 'put her nose where it didn't belong', but never about her actual nose; "Heart" is mostly about instances of heartbreak). Having recently reread O'Farrell's memoir, I found that this didn't measure up.

[It was intriguing to be reading this at the same time as Linn Ullmann's Girl, 1983 because Lichtenstein mentions that Ullmann lived on her street in Oslo and went to the same school (and in both books, the narrator recalls getting a severe sunburn).]

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Kathleen Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir had me riveted from head to toe, stem to sternum. One of those rare can’t-put-down, don’t-want-to-finish books. First, the subject matter – Our bodies! Ourselves! Nina Lichtenstein had me at the list of body parts in the table of contents. And second (but also first!), the writing. Nina’s “journey of bodily discovery” is honest, often funny, and always heartfelt and feels like your best friend sitting really close to you and whispering deep secrets but sometimes, appropriately, shouting and crying. Like Nina, I “joined the world in 1965” and am someone who is “more than fifty, less than sixty,” but I am certain this book would be of interest to just about any woman, even the young ones who might want to face what’s in store – the joys and the sorrows. She begins the “Heart” chapter with, “My life has not involved trials by fire, tragic, or what I think of as traumatic events by any standard definition,” and goes on to describe her relatively normal, happy childhood followed by some “big bangs.” But even the “booooring” parts of life and their bodily legacies are worth writing about and sharing and I’m grateful that she did. Read this book!

(I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.)

[Anne Wellman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fresh approach to memoir - life remembered through body parts (eyes, ears, stomach, etc. and yes, more intimate ones). An often very funny, but also moving, account of a life well lived by this talented Norwegian-born American writer. In the end it's only a device to summon up the details and it's the details that are interesting, but, as Nina Lichtenstein suggests, we might all do well to relive our paths by a tally of our battered old bodies. Enjoyable.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[BK Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memoirists often agonize over structure, looking for the strongest scaffolds or containers for their books. Nina’s is unique—a corporeal structure—the whole organized by individual body parts, each serving as a flesh-and-bone threshold to another time and place. It’s embodied writing at an extraordinary scale, every story revealing itself through the interrogation of a body part.

Here, the body has multiple functions—it’s like a camera, a journal, a mold—recording the imprints of a lifetime of experience. It’s both a repository and a generator of memory. As she explains, “My body, which promised to guide me on this journey, became a portal for the remembering and recording of scars and blessings, traumas and joys, shame and pride, even the smallest moments long forgotten; all experience lodged deep within the body parts’ unique shapes, tissue, fascia, and nerve-endings because the body is at once witness and accomplice, reliable present when sometimes—perhaps often—the mind is not.”

Nina’s breasts contain stories of nurturing, pleasure, impropriety, even pain. Her nose leads her back to the summers of her youth sailing with her family on the southern coast of Norway or working on farms in the countryside. Her hands tell the stories of the hands she’s held, the creations she’s made, the words she’s written, and the gestures handed down through DNA. Her back holds the story of the pain that happened and the addiction that could have happened.

While most of the narratives Nina recounts are triggered by exploration of one body part, ADHD is a story told through three—the brain, the butt, and the mouth—which she thinks of as her “up-to-no-good trinity, a scheming irreverent threesome” that’s interfered with her ability to comport herself in accordance with behavioral norms. It was the brain that wouldn’t let her butt stay glued to the chair or keep her mouth from interrupting. Yet ADHD finds its way into tales of other parts as well, such as her ears, which are hypersensitive, or her eyes, for which she needs glasses that she routinely misplaces or forgets at school. She may not have been diagnosed until middle age, but the signs of ADHD are present in the body-memories of the young girl and young woman.

Perhaps, unsurprisingly, there’s no body part that’s a portal to more moving testimonies than the heart, which takes the author back both to profound love and nearly shattering heartbreak.

The sum of the parts is deeply rewarding. Nina’s sensory memory evokes a fully dimensional and carefully examined existence. Through its wounds, beauty, aches, callouses, imperfections, bruises, lacerations, strengths, and weaknesses it reveals a life of joy, sorrow, passion, and curiosity.

[Yehudit Levinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memoirs have dominated my reading list this past year (The Art of Leaving by Ayelet Tsabari, If All the Seas Were Ink by Ilana Kurshan, Black Milk; On the Conflicting Demands of Writing, Creativity and Motherhood by Elif Shafak, Mother and Other fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays by Nicole Graev Lipson, Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language by Eva Hoffman) I enjoyed all of them for the introspective approach each author portrayed in understanding her life in terms of what the particular author was involved with (moving around, Talmud study, motherhood, literary figures, learning a new language respectively).
Lichtenstein's memoir takes a different approach. She uses her body parts to evoke the memories of her life. Every body carries a story as she explains on a talk I heard her give on Julie Zuckerman's Literary Modi'in. Memoirs using body parts as prompts is very 'democratic' Lichtenstein insists, since everyone has a body. Each chapter starts with a quote from a well known source (all different) to set the mood for the body part. The 16 chapters, Eyes, Breasts, Nose, Skin, Teeth, Hair, Hands, Knees, Vagina, Back, Brain, Mouth and Butt, Heart, Ears, Feet, Hips, and finally Belly all start with the memories of the specific body part but go from there into many other alleyways. Her writing was captivating. I am always very impressed by authors who write so eloquently and flowing in English when it is not their mother tongue (Ayelet Tsabari, Elif Shafak, Eva Hoffman as well as Nina Lichtenstein.) Although I have lived 45 years in Israel and am fluent in Hebrew, I prefer to read and write in English, my mother tongue, the language I was educated in.
Lichtenstein's memoir has no obvious trauma or any disturbing or unsettling memories. But as she explains, her writing of her memoir has helped her to get in touch with her inner voice and her own understanding of who she really is. Lichtenstein contradicts Rene Descartes philosophy "I think, therefore I am" with the dictum "I feel therefore I am". She goes on to say "What I have discovered through the humbling journey of listening to my body in writing this book, is that the body knows a shit load of things that the mind is not even close to conceive of in the same innate, instinctive way."
Lichtenstein has a history in academia with a Phd in French literature and experience in a teaching setting. Her memoir has the added component of helping other writers. She ends her book with a list of prompts about the different body parts to help people write about and discover their own history through their body.

[Jennifer Lang · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Body: My Life in Parts, Nina Boug Lichtenstein takes us on a journey from inside-out, analyzing her physical shape and its shifts, their forms and functions. Along the way, as she delves into and describes her parts--public and private--she muses on her childhood in Oslo, her arrival in the US, her marriage to an American man, her conversion to Judaism, their three sons, and their eventual divorce.

From early on, Lichtenstein battled with outsiderhood in her own country and culture and only after immigrating to America and meeting her husband's boisterous clan and assuming the role of Balabusta, Yiddish for a good homemaker, did she feel a sense of belonging. Years later, following a back injury, she relied on pain medication to stay upright and manage her household, eventually revealing some hard truths--about addiction, about dependency, about weakness.

Her openness to see these truths and her keen self-awareness are two of Lichtenstein's superpowers. Perhaps she was always self-aware, or perhaps her yoga practice helped her become more self-aware. She writes: "Yoga encourages my mind to slow down and to notice both the interior and exterior world with a kind of calm and compassion I don't naturally experience."

Looking through that lens, she sees herself as someone who hangs between worlds--suspended mid-air--whether in generations or shoe sizes, cultures, religions, or lifestyles. And in that liminal space, she questions if she occupies too much space, if that's what made her marriage fall apart.

As Lichtenstein says, "When you mind your body for memory riches, you don't necessarily need to sit but you do need to listen and be curious the wealth of information contained in the physicality of the body seems sacred; Sensations that tell stories from One singular life across an expanse of time, there - all over us around us in a stash for us to mine."

After the epilogue, Lichtenstein graciously offers the reader a host of body memory writing prompts for eyes, nose, mouth, ears, skin, teeth, hair, heart, brain, hands, feet, knees, back, butt, belly, hips, breasts, vagina/vulva, penis/testicles and lastly, a prompt shaping your body part memory into a poem.

[Cavak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Body: My Life in Parts felt like a mindful deep breathing exercise. Instructors often asks their meditating participants to take in what the body is telling them in a particular moment, one body part at a time, then gently coax them to relax.

Lichtenstein asked her body to keep speaking to her so she could write their words down.

When I read that she practices yoga, the comparison and formatting of the memoir made a lot more sense to me. It brought a structure for memories that could otherwise appear sporadic, grounding them in an immediate physical component. Enjoyable in a breezy way, she goes back as far as she can remember. Her insecurities, her pain for stressful events, her hedonistic self, her learnings as she rediscovers herself, as well as her traumas. Love that balance.

Since she has lived a privileged life, I was interested in the different culture attitudes of her youth. What was it like living in Oslo during the '60s and '70s for her, and how was the transition to the United States differ from that. How she managed those chaotic child-rearing years of three young baby boys mostly by herself. What historical events left an impact on her as she and her family lived through loss and transitions.

Lichtenstein may repeat herself in Body: My Life in Parts, but I appreciate that from a life story told out of order. We often do that when we're asked to talk about ourselves, and that's an organic and informal quality that survived well for me in text. Her writing delves into what she is comfortable with sharing; don't expect her share with intricate details and logistics. More an emotional feeling experience that dips in and out of reality at selective times.

There's a hook in the beginning about the pain in her hip that leads into why she wrote her memoir, and I was half-expecting her to explain why she had that pain somewhere in the book. I guess she didn't know the answer to that while she was writing either. Hope she's all right.

The invitational writing prompts at the end were a positive gift. I'll probably attempt these in the future. They sounded like fun ways to record a life. Thank you for sharing them.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Michelle Tobin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Body: My Life in Parts, by Nina B. Lichtenstein

The concept and structure that undergirds, Nina B. Lichtenstein’s book, Body: My Life in Parts, is so clever that one must wonder why no one has thought of this brilliant idea before. I will say right off the bat, I really enjoyed this book.

As a person raised within Catholicism, shame was the predominant message I received around anything bodily especially the female body. Consequently, I have always been fairly detached from my body unless I’m swimming. Nina’s raw honesty, dissecting her life’s experiences through body parts was a marvel to me, and a nudge to explore my life similarly. In fact, as she described the memories evoked from “mining the memories within different body parts,” she was able to evoke similar memories from my own life.

Nina traverses through the body exploration from childhood to present day. She deftly describes the triumphs and failures without aggrandizement or self-pity. Yet some of the stories are indeed heartbreaking. She demonstrates the wisdom garnered from the body exploration as explained in Bessel Vander Kolk’s, The Body Keeps the Score as the body stores our life’s traumas, which then need to be released through the body. To that end, Nina provides questions at the end of the book to facilitate our own explorations, which would be a great exercise for anyone.

I loved her line, Sentio Ergo Sum—I feel therefore I am. Or, as she also says, “The body knows a shitload of things.” There was a lot of heartbreak within the pages and wisdom gained. Brilliant!!

I received an advanced copy and am leaving the review voluntarily.

[Elaina Battista-Parsons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lichtenstein’s Body: My Life in Parts is a fount of rich gems of stories about how our imperfect/perfect bodies happily narrate our life story first. Brain second. Pen on paper last. The way a second grade memory of dentistry within an elementary school sticks to your muscle memory and the way our heart health can be the scariest health as a human being. Unexpected in many ways.

Every essay and chapter highlights a new body part, expressing Nina’s experiences without missing an aspect that we’d enjoy reading. Her choices as an author resonate. One of my favorites lives in Teeth: "with a spec of broccoli rabe sullying my smile, my tarnished teeth became the metaphor for how he saw me."

So much more than sensory and scrumptious description, we’re plopped headfirst into Lichtenstein’s memories guided by a body part—narrated with ease and great pace.

“The wealth of information contained in the physicality of the body seems to me as something sacred;”…a wonderful summation of what we should not ignore about walking around as a human. Our bodies are so intelligent on their own, and Lichtenstein’s collection does an amazing job of narrating how, why, where, and when. Her Norwegian roots are fascinating, and as a woman, riveting.

[Margo · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Body: My Life in Parts, Nina B. Lichtenstein uses her corporeal being as an organizing principle to weave a lifetime of disassembled identities and fragmented recollections into a new kind of memoir. The idea that memories and their associated emotions reside in our bodies is not new, but in interrogating her middle-aged breasts, vagina, nose, hair, ears, belly and hips, Lichtenstein is able to unlock vivid sensory details and feelings about her major life events: growing up in Norway, marrying into a Jewish family, giving birth to three sons in rapid succession, and navigating the end of her decades-long marriage. Told with surprising vulnerability and insight, Body sometimes feels fragmented. But that’s how memories are. That’s how lives are. While our brains keep memories locked in a sometimes-impenetrable-feeling central vault, the often-overlooked physical parts that have accompanied us on our journeys—our feet, our hands, our eyes—are only too willing to divulge their experiences if asked. If even after reading Body, you don’t know where to start, Lichtenstein includes prompts for interrogating the physical parts of ourselves that make up this thing called a human.

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve never read a memoir with a more unique and organic structure than “Body: My Life in Parts.” The concept of the author grouping the memories of her life via body parts is just brilliant!

Rather than be a gimmick, however, such an organization holds weight and depth due to studies that describe how we humans hold past experiences in our bodies, through muscle memory, synaptic connections and sensory memory.

As the author beautifully writes in her prologue: “Each body part is a treasure chest waiting to have its lock picked and content discovered and examined, touched again, felt again, and maybe even understood from the point of view of the person I’ve become. What happened in and to the body of this woman, daughter, mother, wife, lover, friend, teacher, writer, and how do all these bodily life-moments become the building blocks of ‘me?’”

The author begins with essays of memories related to eyes and what she’s witnessed, and moves to her breasts, skin and onward. And so we see the the life of this Norwegian-born American turned Jewish mother of three fill out into a rich body of well-lived life where humor and love flourish.

[Michelle Redo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not wait to read this book and it did not disappoint
The voice is cheeky and fun, as well as candid and intimate. The chapters add up to reveal more than the sum of her parts… A psalm to breasts, an ode to knees, a paean to feet, truly spanning an anatomical and emotional gamut from the sacred to the profane, always engaging, ever changing. I love how her body parts contain not only the historical, but also the metaphorical.

Parts to look forward to include finding compassion in eyes, rage AND affection in hands; disappointment between her teeth; heartbreak in its obvious location as well as love, and acceptance in her belly. As a memoir-in-essays it's a great read to pick up and put down for one part or all of them. Discover along with Nina the revelations of self within our own skin as she also includes a great set of body memory prompts for the reader to explore his or her own life in parts too.

I was thrilled to receive my ARC for this book. I'm equally thrilled to share my take on it voluntarily here too.

[Deborah Shepherd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! And so radical in its simplicity. Nina B. Lichtenstein's new memoir, Body: My Life in Parts, is not only layered, textured, and beautifully written, it's completely identifiable. Every one of us has body parts that serve as portals to our memories: My feet? The time my five-year-old daughter yearned for the fire-engine-red painted toe nails in a magazine ad, we both got pedicures, and it's turned into our 40+ year summer ritual. Hand? The time I fell off my bike following a mini-triathlon and broke my wrist, but not before I finished my very first race at 64. Lichtenstein has crafted a stunning whole from the sum of her parts, and anyone with a body should read it. Bonus: the author has included writing prompts at the end of the book to help readers appreciate their own imperfectly perfect bodies. I loved this book.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Dianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It’s humbling to wake up in the middle of the night and realize your life is more than halfway to ‘the end,’” the author begins her prologue. Thus begins a journey to write about memories related to her specific body parts and to reflect more deeply on the experiences that have shaped her. From her eyes, nose, skin, hair, and teeth to more intimate parts of the anatomy, Lichtenstein probes the events of her past and holds nothing back. She concludes with a section of “Body Memory Prompts,” which readers can “use as take-off points for [their] own bodily journey of discovery.” Body: My Life in Parts presents an innovative approach to crafting memoir and is a guide to examining one’s life and memories in a creative and thoroughly captivating way.

I received a free advance review copy and am leaving this review voluntarily. I loved this book and recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading and/or writing memoir.

[Catie Monks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Received a digital ARC from Vine Leaves Press. Many things about this memoir will stay with me. First of all, the book was designed to be read in reverse. I wasn’t sure if this was to keep my attention and prevent my reading pursuit from becoming lazy. Perhaps. As I read I was worried this would become a middle aged woman bemoaning the aches and pains and decay of “body”, but I was so happy to find that it was a careful inventory and unlocking of memory associated with a well-lived life through the scars, layers of flesh and aches. This is a writer who is very self aware and eager to share herself but in a way that isn’t self-involved or exhibitionistic. Through each zone or part, she relives a joyful or painful time in her amazing life. I especially welcomed the invitation for the reader to do the same at the end, with an outline and discussion portion. Thanks, Nina!

[Phoebe]

What a unique way to explore life! I was intrigued by each chapter and found the parts of the body provided insights I had not—at least consciously—considered. The layers of life through our different ages reflected in skin, knees, hair, etc. did make me remember my own body memory reflections from teen sunburns and hair rebellions to nursing children to the pain of divorce from a long marriage. I never thought of my strong teeth as a symbol of divorce survival! This is a lovely book for learning about the author’s life and reflecting on one’s own. I received an arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Helene MCGLAUFLIN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nina Litchenstein's Body, My Life is Parts is a bold and courageous memoir. At a time when patriarchy is attempting to encroach on women's power and voice, Nina's story is an important reminder that women continue to speak, and speak honestly about their experience. In each chapter, Nina without apology tells the truth about her life through every part of her body. From knees to nose we come to know Nina's struggles, joys, resurrections. This is one strong, embodied woman that will not be silent, giving permission to every woman to be the same.

[Smutty Space Squid · Rating 5 out of 5]

This wasn't the type of book I'd usually go for, but I found it really entertaining. The longer I am alive the more i appreciate the connection between our body and the moments of our lives that have made us who we are.

This read was very quick and I definitely finished feeling a gratuitous sense of self-worth, which I'm not sure is what the author intended - but it pulled me out of my own self-criticism. I have reccomend it to several people.

I received a free copy of this book as an ARC reader. I am leaving this review without any influence and of my own free will.

[Briann Shear · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fascinating and readable memoir is written in chapters each based on a body part. These rather free-flowing chapters allow the author to riff on changes to the parts, importance of the parts to her story, and much more. It is such an interesting way to structure a memoir and kept me interested throughout. Honest and open, the author exposes herself literally and her story allows us to identify with her experiences and also think about our own.

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Other reviewers are raving over the unique structure of the book, so I will add that the structure allows for a beautiful variety of stories. I love a book that is non-linear, it keeps things interesting and trusts the reader to build the narrative. A work of true creativity that will entertain everyone with a body!

[Caroline Igra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful memoir with an unusual and highly creative construct. Lichtenstein recounts her life and experiences through the lens of her body's various parts. Stories, written in gorgeous, flowing prose and adding up to a rich reading experience, are organized according to one organ or another. It's a fantastic concept, pulled off exceptionally well.

[Joelle Tamraz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the voice in this memoir which felt like an intimate conversation with the author. As the author courses through memories linked with body parts we unpack layers and depth of experience, resulting is a form of spiritual memoir.

[Talya Jankovits · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a brilliant way to explore memory - through the body. Lichtenstein takes us on a journey from top to bottom, tracing lived moments etched into the physical map of the self as she celebrates pain and joy, triumphs and losses, and various metamorphosis. “A must read for anyone with a body! “

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book about all the ways our bodies hold who we are. As Nina writes:

“Our bodies, our skin, our storybooks: wars and victories, sorrows and joys, all inscribed there and connecting us to our memories, to our stories, and to ourselves.”

[Penny Guisinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful, innovative, daring, and intimate. I loved this for how well-constructed it is and for its unique use of embodiment as a path to storytelling. Brave and honest. Loved it!

[Patti Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED this book! I was fortunate to receive an early copy, and I couldn’t put it down. I’ve been reading a lot of memoir lately and this one really stands out as a favorite. The author takes us on a tour of her life as related to her body parts. It’s an unexpected and fascinating way to approach memoir—I was captivated the whole time! Each chapter, appropriately titled; Hair, Eyes, Skin, etc., is filled with stories told through honesty and vulnerability about memories held within the body and related to its parts. I laughed, cried, and sometimes cringed at the all too familiar experiences Liechtenstein shares through her casual, easy-going style of writing. I felt as though I was sitting across the table from an old friend, and we were reminiscing. This is a beautiful and creative book that I highly recommend to everyone.