Blanket

Object Lessons

by Kara Thompson

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

We pull and tug on blankets to cover our bodies, to see us through the night, or an illness. Blankets shield us in mourning, and witness our most intimate pleasures. We are born into blankets. Blankets keep us alive, and they cover us in death. Blanket reveals blankets everywhere: film, art, geology, disasters, battlefields, resistance, home.

Curious, fearless, vulnerable, and critical, Blanket interweaves cultural critique with memoir to cast new light on a ubiquitous object: It transforms an ordinary thing into a vibrant and vital carrier of stories and secrets, an object of inheritance and belonging, a companion to uncover.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in the The Atlantic.

Genres: Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published September 20, 2018

Reviews

[corinne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blanket pulls you into a deftly woven narrative of history and survival, exploring the contours of the blanket as an animate being, one that breathes history, mourning, reclamation and loss. The book structure moves through accounts of the blanket as contemporary art material and object, the blanket as holding the beloved in life and loss, the blanket as guide and site of community, the blanket as rebellion and armor, the blanket as carrier of indigenous histories and culture, laden with legacies of settler colonialism and honoring survival. Throughout, Thompson gently wraps us in memoir of the childhood death of her brother– a story that brings to life the blankets of all our pasts, their sentient histories and their continual hauntings. She asks us “Can a book be a blanket too?” and I enjoyed getting lost in the warm, profound folds of this one.

[Chelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blanket is unlike any other book I’ve read—it’s both deeply intellectual and deeply felt, deft and far-ranging in its inspirations and explorations yet exquisitely, achingly focused in its brief, breathtakingly beautiful interludes of memoir (which explore the hauntings and ghosts of childhood and the grief of losing a brother.) The ending is a gut punch—I’ve read and re-read it several times and it brings me to tears every time. One of the smartest *and* most moving works of creative nonfiction I’ve read in a long time.

[Brice Fuqua · Rating 2 out of 5]

The newest Object Lessons book is called Blanket, but you will find precious little information about them in this brief volume.
Thompson uses the blanket as a metaphor for left-wing screeds on Native -American discrimination, conceptual art, gay rights , hazing and gun control.
As usual in this series, the most effective section involve personal anecdotes. In Blanket, Thompson relates how her older brother died of cancer while she was a teenager. The story of how he was buried with his blanket is, by far, the most touching moment in an otherwise tiresome book.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely little book. Intersperses memoir with Native histories, descriptions and critiques of art installations, and government practices, all wrapped up in the blanket theme. A sad book that filled my heart.

[jo lemahieu · Rating 3 out of 5]

not really my thing, im not a serious metaphorical essay guy i guess but i really enjoyed the first chapter where the ideas were introduced

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Each of these Object Lessons series has something to offer, but I find some more interesting than others, and for me this was one of the less interesting ones. It’s a combination of exploration and memoir and I could have done without the memoir bit, as I didn’t feel it added anything to the subject. But the author admittedly achieves her end in making the reader think more about blankets and their significance to societies throughout the ages, ranging as she does from Native American blankets to school shootings to the Standing Rock pipeline protests to contemporary art installations. If anything I found the book just too diffuse and wide-ranging but I definitely became more conscious of the fact that “Blankets are everyday objects we take for granted….but blankets quietly record our histories”.

[Theediscerning · Rating 2 out of 5]

This series can always throw a curveball of the impenetrable at the reader in the hope they don't duck. Here, the historical truth of disease-riddled blankets being given by the Brits to the Native North Americans to kill them off is looked at, but so are too many modern artworks destined for Pseud's Corner, Kubrick films, and more. I would have learnt more from, and appreciated more of, the more trivial aspects of the subject, such as airline blanket wash rotas. Either way, you certainly get an eclectic and learned look at a topic you'd never assume book-worthy, which is this series' raison d'etre.

[Beth Younge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book as it not only the explored blankets as physical objects but items that relate to the temporality of society. The way that Thompson connected the personal history she has of them with the way that they are used by people and the acts they represent. This felt like it was part memoir and part academic study and this was clearly shown in how the structure of it and how she presented her arguments. It was an enjoyable and educational at the same time.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Object Lesson series is tricky because each book is so different from the others. The editors do a great job opening their minds and hearts to a wide variety of ways to embrace the object. Readers' expectations are hard to meet but Blanket does what Object Lessons do best. Early on, Thompson recognizes that "blanket" is vast. They can take it on only as they can take it on. Thus, blanket the word, blanket the phenomenon, blanket the object burn under Thompson's laser-like focus. It's a hot book, full of synaptic energy and brilliant insight.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Kara Thompson, Bloomsbury Academic, and Netgalley for this advanced reader copy of “Object Lessons: Blanket” for an honest review.

I am uncertain now what I first thought I was getting into when I requested this book, but it wasn’t what I got when I received. Instead I was invited by a beckoning hand, that wrapped a blanket around me, to come on a journey of all the things people do and have done with blankets, what they mean and can stand for.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this would be a photo book and while there were photos, this was actually a book of essays about blankets. From the Object Lessons series, which are books of short stories of ordinary objects, Blanket did its job by making me think about the way blankets are important objects in our lives - something I never thought about before. This book makes me want to read more from this series.

[Micki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thompsons book - like several others in the "Object Lessons" series - is part philosophical thesis. But "Blanket" is also part poetry, part history, and part field guide to a world that can often feel like a weighted blanket; some days you feel comforted by it, others oppressed.