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On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays
A beautifully written suite of personal essays on the value of not knowing.
Moments of clarity are rare and fleeting; how can we become comfortable outside of them, in the more general condition of uncertainty within which we make our lives? Written by English professor Emily Ogden while her children were small, On Not Knowing forays into this rich, ambivalent space. Each of her sharply observed essays invites the reader to think with her about questions she can’t set not knowing how to give birth, to listen, to hold it together, to love.
Unapologetically capacious in her range of reference and idiosyncratic in the canon she draws on, Ogden moves nimbly among the registers of experience, from the operation of a breast pump to the art of herding cattle; from one-night stands to the stories of Edgar Allan Poe; from kayaking near a whale to a psychoanalytic meditation on drowning. Committed to the accumulation of knowledge, Ogden nonetheless finds that knowingness for her can be a way of getting stuck, a way of not really living. Rather than the defensiveness of willful ignorance, On Not Knowing celebrates the defenselessness of not knowing yet—possibly of not knowing ever. Ultimately, this book shows how resisting the temptation of knowingness and embracing the position of not knowing becomes a form of love.
Moments of clarity are rare and fleeting; how can we become comfortable outside of them, in the more general condition of uncertainty within which we make our lives? Written by English professor Emily Ogden while her children were small, On Not Knowing forays into this rich, ambivalent space. Each of her sharply observed essays invites the reader to think with her about questions she can’t set not knowing how to give birth, to listen, to hold it together, to love.
Unapologetically capacious in her range of reference and idiosyncratic in the canon she draws on, Ogden moves nimbly among the registers of experience, from the operation of a breast pump to the art of herding cattle; from one-night stands to the stories of Edgar Allan Poe; from kayaking near a whale to a psychoanalytic meditation on drowning. Committed to the accumulation of knowledge, Ogden nonetheless finds that knowingness for her can be a way of getting stuck, a way of not really living. Rather than the defensiveness of willful ignorance, On Not Knowing celebrates the defenselessness of not knowing yet—possibly of not knowing ever. Ultimately, this book shows how resisting the temptation of knowingness and embracing the position of not knowing becomes a form of love.
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
July 31, 2024
The world burns, yet the fire is not bright enough to read a map by.
As indicated by the title, an intriguing premise underpins this collection of seventeen succinct essays: the value of not knowing in approaching life and love and of engaging with the unknown. What if we would admit that in on many levels of life, we are not knowledgeable or our knowledge doesn’t answer our questions in our relationships with other creatures? 'How to love, what to do, in the dim times'? What if we would look at love, desire, parenthood, birds and cows without the ballast of our received ideas or the patterns that were ingrained into our mind by our personal history of relationships and experiences– or by simple preconception or bias? Ogden does not plead for ignorance as such – rather for looking at phenomena unburdened. For her, unknowing isn’t merely negative nor sheer absence or resignation, nor does ignorance equal bliss. In Ogden’s view, unknowing can be a state that precedes knowledge or shifts into articulating it. She engages with a kind of unknowing that is 'not the defensiveness of wilful ignorance but the defenceless of not knowing yet'. The not knowing can be a conscious-unconscious, philosophical state of exploration and openness to the experiential.
Drawing on and connecting personal experiences like the speech patterns as echoed by her twin children and the miscarriage revealing an unknown pregnancy to poetry of Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson, Ogden thematises the different forms of consciousness and of mutual ignorance of that consciousness both in the human context and in the natural world. Ogden lards her enquiry into the unknown with insights of philosophy and psycho-analysis and references to myths and the Bible, amply illustrated by quotations ranging from Baldwin, Baudelaire, Locke, Poe, Emerson, Calvino, Elisabeth Hardwick to Ovid.
The tree of knowledge of good and evil (Photograph by Kasia Derwinska)
The writing is beautiful and radiant and the way Ogden’s observations related to her personal life seamlessly flow into more philosophical reflections invigorates the text – in that respect the essays reminded me of the work of Karl Ove Knausgård. I however missed a more encompassing view for the collection as a whole to make it truly memorable (as well as I seem to have missed the point of some of the essays). Nevertheless the collection offered a few delicious tidbits of thought and warmed me to further reading of a few authors Ogden made me curious about (Mary Ruelfe, Anne Dufourmantelle, Elisabeth Hardwick). Her musings on Emily Dickinson, particularly on the powerful line Better an ignis fatuus/Than no illume at all gently nudged me to start Les villes de papier, a essay-novel in which Dominique Fortier tenderly brings Emily Dickinson to life.
Two essays can be found online (How to Come Back to Life) and How to have a one-night stand (with another title, Mind Games).
Many thanks to the University of Chicago Press and the author for the advanced reading copy via NetGalley.
As indicated by the title, an intriguing premise underpins this collection of seventeen succinct essays: the value of not knowing in approaching life and love and of engaging with the unknown. What if we would admit that in on many levels of life, we are not knowledgeable or our knowledge doesn’t answer our questions in our relationships with other creatures? 'How to love, what to do, in the dim times'? What if we would look at love, desire, parenthood, birds and cows without the ballast of our received ideas or the patterns that were ingrained into our mind by our personal history of relationships and experiences– or by simple preconception or bias? Ogden does not plead for ignorance as such – rather for looking at phenomena unburdened. For her, unknowing isn’t merely negative nor sheer absence or resignation, nor does ignorance equal bliss. In Ogden’s view, unknowing can be a state that precedes knowledge or shifts into articulating it. She engages with a kind of unknowing that is 'not the defensiveness of wilful ignorance but the defenceless of not knowing yet'. The not knowing can be a conscious-unconscious, philosophical state of exploration and openness to the experiential.
Drawing on and connecting personal experiences like the speech patterns as echoed by her twin children and the miscarriage revealing an unknown pregnancy to poetry of Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson, Ogden thematises the different forms of consciousness and of mutual ignorance of that consciousness both in the human context and in the natural world. Ogden lards her enquiry into the unknown with insights of philosophy and psycho-analysis and references to myths and the Bible, amply illustrated by quotations ranging from Baldwin, Baudelaire, Locke, Poe, Emerson, Calvino, Elisabeth Hardwick to Ovid.
The tree of knowledge of good and evil (Photograph by Kasia Derwinska)
The writing is beautiful and radiant and the way Ogden’s observations related to her personal life seamlessly flow into more philosophical reflections invigorates the text – in that respect the essays reminded me of the work of Karl Ove Knausgård. I however missed a more encompassing view for the collection as a whole to make it truly memorable (as well as I seem to have missed the point of some of the essays). Nevertheless the collection offered a few delicious tidbits of thought and warmed me to further reading of a few authors Ogden made me curious about (Mary Ruelfe, Anne Dufourmantelle, Elisabeth Hardwick). Her musings on Emily Dickinson, particularly on the powerful line Better an ignis fatuus/Than no illume at all gently nudged me to start Les villes de papier, a essay-novel in which Dominique Fortier tenderly brings Emily Dickinson to life.
Two essays can be found online (How to Come Back to Life) and How to have a one-night stand (with another title, Mind Games).
Many thanks to the University of Chicago Press and the author for the advanced reading copy via NetGalley.
February 14, 2022
I had a real had time with this one. While reading, each essay seemed like a tour de force, with interesting references, deep criticism of literature and media, and startling scenes from parenthood. But as soon as I finished them, I couldn't remember a single thing about them. A rather odd experience as both a reader and reviewer!
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
February 25, 2023
at first, i got disappointed and even frustrated. i want every book that includes stories about birds, fish, etc, to have big disclaimers on them. however, as i patiently went on, it turned out that this collection had much more to offer. somewhere in the middle, i became Ogden's passionate fan.
so, you might struggle, but there's also a huge possibility that you will find a number of illuminating ideas.
so, you might struggle, but there's also a huge possibility that you will find a number of illuminating ideas.
April 8, 2023
I am too stupid for this book but i still liked it
July 5, 2024
Picked this up from the recommended shelf at Oxford’s Blackwell’s, intrigued by the description of the essays being about living in ambiguity. This seemed apropos of my mental space after my trip.
The essays weren’t super revelatory, but if I had the option to go back in time I wouldn’t *not* read this book, which is higher praise than I can give for most of the books I read on a whim.
Best passages:
(Page 12-13)
“They mingle with each other, the metaphysical terror and the historical one, the salt and the blood, the sea and the so-cial. One Leviathan is no less dramatically out of scale with our individual capacities than the other. As Émile Durkheim had it, culture, though a human creation, was nonetheless received as nature by us. Our minds were neither the blank slates that John Locke imagined nor were they furnished with the innate ideas whose existence Locke doubted. Instead, the way we perceived the most basic categories, such as space and time, was given to us in infancy by the culture into which we were born. Durkheim called these givens "collective rep-resentations." The world we received as given, the one that formed our perceptions fundamentally, was both nature and culture. It was both kinds of Leviathan.
One can call this cultural placenta an "unconscious" of sorts, but in the sense of the term that the anthropologist Edward Sapir uses when he refers to "the unconscious patterning of behavior in society." lo Sapir's unconscious is not an upsurging beast. It is a structuring matrix, a substance on which we are buoyed up. It is not really possible to make sense of how anyone floats along, or for that matter, how anyone drowns, without presuming the existence of a tremendous amount of social information, including "essentially arbitrary modes of interpretation that social tradition is constantly suggesting to us from the very moment of our birth."11 Human beings have what Sapir calls "intuition" about all that social information. Intuition is not mystical here; it amounts instead to a tact about how to live, a "very delicately nuanced feeling of subtle relations, both experienced and possible." We often have the experience, Sapir thought, of discovering that what felt like a free action was really motivated by loyalty to a finely perceived but inarticulable form. "There are polite and impolite ways of breathing."
“To constitute ourselves as single people, singly embod-ied, we tell over and over the dissolutions we have survived.
From woe to woe tell o'er, says Sonnet 30's Shakespeare, luxuriating in his losses.* My sons' first act of narration was to tell over their woes. In the recounting, sadness and pain gave way to intellectual eagerness. They narrated even when they couldn't yet speak with their voices, when they had to run from one place to the other to show what had happened.
Their first story told how one of them had thrown up on the carpet in two spots. They would run to the first spot, grunt, and point excitedly at their stomachs and mouths, then at the carpet. Then they would run to the second spot, and do it again. They manifested all the urgency of a Lassie bringing rescuers to the well.”
(Page 52)
“Riffing can construct. You can return over and over to the paucity of your knowledge to a word, for example, that you don't fully understand—or to a question that you don't know how to answer, or to a theme. What to me was the whiteness of the whale? The gamesomeness of this return is sufficient to cause something to appear out of nothing. Something cannot help but appear out of nothing. And thus you can inflate for yourself a room whose capacity is right. This room would be expansive enough that the body can move, enclosed enough that the mind can rest. Then sometimes, others can use these rooms too, after the writer is finished with them. It is as though writing can be perceived as an environment. In the reading of certain writers, many of the ones cited in this book, my thoughts and annotations in the margins are less narrowly topical comments on what is being said than records of what the words have excited. What I thought of while I was in that room. Riffs.”
^i like the idea of returning to the same word or question or thought over and over again and not having found an answer but having something—ineffable probably—nonetheless constructed by the very act of return
(Page 72)
“I am not equipped to solve the problem of my skepticism.
Sometimes, though, I am offered resolution. A song alights and fortunately does not know how to hear me doubting it will land. Even a peacock less resplendent than the opera can grant this reprieve; beauty need only come in the form of a pigeon, provided it comes without my will; provided it promises a world that can steal up on me. I have seen and heard thousands of mourning doves in my life. But I would rather look out my window and lock eyes, suddenly, with a mourning dove sitting on a wire than go to a silo where a barn owl is known to live and find him duly peering down at me from a roof strut.”
^Reminded me of the stretch of sea I saw while driving in Latvia
The essays weren’t super revelatory, but if I had the option to go back in time I wouldn’t *not* read this book, which is higher praise than I can give for most of the books I read on a whim.
Best passages:
(Page 12-13)
“They mingle with each other, the metaphysical terror and the historical one, the salt and the blood, the sea and the so-cial. One Leviathan is no less dramatically out of scale with our individual capacities than the other. As Émile Durkheim had it, culture, though a human creation, was nonetheless received as nature by us. Our minds were neither the blank slates that John Locke imagined nor were they furnished with the innate ideas whose existence Locke doubted. Instead, the way we perceived the most basic categories, such as space and time, was given to us in infancy by the culture into which we were born. Durkheim called these givens "collective rep-resentations." The world we received as given, the one that formed our perceptions fundamentally, was both nature and culture. It was both kinds of Leviathan.
One can call this cultural placenta an "unconscious" of sorts, but in the sense of the term that the anthropologist Edward Sapir uses when he refers to "the unconscious patterning of behavior in society." lo Sapir's unconscious is not an upsurging beast. It is a structuring matrix, a substance on which we are buoyed up. It is not really possible to make sense of how anyone floats along, or for that matter, how anyone drowns, without presuming the existence of a tremendous amount of social information, including "essentially arbitrary modes of interpretation that social tradition is constantly suggesting to us from the very moment of our birth."11 Human beings have what Sapir calls "intuition" about all that social information. Intuition is not mystical here; it amounts instead to a tact about how to live, a "very delicately nuanced feeling of subtle relations, both experienced and possible." We often have the experience, Sapir thought, of discovering that what felt like a free action was really motivated by loyalty to a finely perceived but inarticulable form. "There are polite and impolite ways of breathing."
“To constitute ourselves as single people, singly embod-ied, we tell over and over the dissolutions we have survived.
From woe to woe tell o'er, says Sonnet 30's Shakespeare, luxuriating in his losses.* My sons' first act of narration was to tell over their woes. In the recounting, sadness and pain gave way to intellectual eagerness. They narrated even when they couldn't yet speak with their voices, when they had to run from one place to the other to show what had happened.
Their first story told how one of them had thrown up on the carpet in two spots. They would run to the first spot, grunt, and point excitedly at their stomachs and mouths, then at the carpet. Then they would run to the second spot, and do it again. They manifested all the urgency of a Lassie bringing rescuers to the well.”
(Page 52)
“Riffing can construct. You can return over and over to the paucity of your knowledge to a word, for example, that you don't fully understand—or to a question that you don't know how to answer, or to a theme. What to me was the whiteness of the whale? The gamesomeness of this return is sufficient to cause something to appear out of nothing. Something cannot help but appear out of nothing. And thus you can inflate for yourself a room whose capacity is right. This room would be expansive enough that the body can move, enclosed enough that the mind can rest. Then sometimes, others can use these rooms too, after the writer is finished with them. It is as though writing can be perceived as an environment. In the reading of certain writers, many of the ones cited in this book, my thoughts and annotations in the margins are less narrowly topical comments on what is being said than records of what the words have excited. What I thought of while I was in that room. Riffs.”
^i like the idea of returning to the same word or question or thought over and over again and not having found an answer but having something—ineffable probably—nonetheless constructed by the very act of return
(Page 72)
“I am not equipped to solve the problem of my skepticism.
Sometimes, though, I am offered resolution. A song alights and fortunately does not know how to hear me doubting it will land. Even a peacock less resplendent than the opera can grant this reprieve; beauty need only come in the form of a pigeon, provided it comes without my will; provided it promises a world that can steal up on me. I have seen and heard thousands of mourning doves in my life. But I would rather look out my window and lock eyes, suddenly, with a mourning dove sitting on a wire than go to a silo where a barn owl is known to live and find him duly peering down at me from a roof strut.”
^Reminded me of the stretch of sea I saw while driving in Latvia
March 2, 2022
Perfectly sized personal essays. Why, indeed, would anyone write more if they know nothing. I know nothing and I have already typed quite too many words into this website over my lifetime. This little book, which opens like a door, puts me to shame. Anyone could say more while typing less — that's one takeaway, anyway. More of my words about this book are on Medium, but I know nothing. I received a free advance copy from NetGalley.
December 17, 2023
Breathtakingly good. Read it in two sittings, one day. The kind of book you finish and immediately order a copy for a best friend.
February 22, 2024
I don't know what I just read but I had a good time! Wooo!
Would probably do again.
*Upon reflection, this is like riding a themed rollercoaster while missing out on all the thematic bits and needing to ride it again just to see what I missed out on. And probably again. And again.
Would probably do again.
*Upon reflection, this is like riding a themed rollercoaster while missing out on all the thematic bits and needing to ride it again just to see what I missed out on. And probably again. And again.
Read
November 10, 2022Thoughtful essays that never seem to speak directly to their titles, but get there eventually. Having finished it, I will probably start reading it again. I have to start Melville’s Moby Dick at this point too.
I find myself reflecting on Ogden’s comments, or a poem or story she presents in her essays, long after I’ve put the book down.
“In the trembling of the minnows, in the busy chaos of our unknowing, the Leviathan that is hunting us and that we are might become visible.”
I find myself reflecting on Ogden’s comments, or a poem or story she presents in her essays, long after I’ve put the book down.
“In the trembling of the minnows, in the busy chaos of our unknowing, the Leviathan that is hunting us and that we are might become visible.”
October 15, 2022
So true girl
November 28, 2024
Electric prose that strikes deep within the unformed-yet-forming self. Most of Ogden’s meaning lies between the lines, her language moving like a deep sea leviathan along the ocean bed of the soul, unseen by the mind’s eye, without form or finitude, made known to the reader only by the sand it unsettles in its wake. These essays are drenched in literary allusion, and there are certainly parts that escape me. I also felt the collection lacked a sense of completeness - some essays were much stronger than others, and some had tenuous connections to the overarching theme of ‘not knowing’. I liked her essays “How to Catch a Minnow” and “How to Come Back to Life” best. Nonetheless I was left with the distinctive sense of being unsettled, of being cast into uncertainty. I believe this was Ogden’s goal.
Two favourite quotes:
“There are patterns that can sustain you, even though they do not last forever, even though they do not mark up the world as known once and for all - even though they are not, strictly speaking, true.”
“Before the end of the world, even while the world is ending, the Book of Revelation concerns itself with dailiness, as though there were a close relationship between the lightning strike and the dimness into which it subsided.”
Two favourite quotes:
“There are patterns that can sustain you, even though they do not last forever, even though they do not mark up the world as known once and for all - even though they are not, strictly speaking, true.”
“Before the end of the world, even while the world is ending, the Book of Revelation concerns itself with dailiness, as though there were a close relationship between the lightning strike and the dimness into which it subsided.”
September 15, 2025
Some of this offers beautiful insight into our humanity, with precise lyrical prose. I also have strong disagreements with Ogden about what Keats was trying to say about immortality and about Eurydice's feelings on Orpheus turning back to look at her. She reminded me a bit of Kate Zambreno. This was a very fleshy read, less brazenly crass than Zambreno's prose, more detached and intellectualised, but intimate nonetheless.
March 2, 2023
“and we do not yet know enough— we never know enough— about whether we are loved.” (69)
November 29, 2023
Thoughtful, personal and poetic essays on love, grief and overcoming - or rather accepting and embracing - life's uncertainties. Some of these essays hit harder than others, and the titular essay How to Love is a beautiful, heartbreaking essay, about loss and its relationship and anxiety with love. Had some great discussions with friends about this book, there's a lot to unpack here.
July 3, 2024
I looooved this. At first I felt so stupid - because she is so smart, I had a hard time having an opinion on the ideas and prose she conveyed lol. Yet the work targets such natural beauty through agricultural metaphor and love and mothering. She is so wise and smart and such a trustworthy author. Such vastly intelligent writing. I was moved again and again, love love love.
March 6, 2023
Very eloquent young (I believe) author that likes to hop from association to association, all while not hiding what she feels about herself. It just didn’t grip me, that’s all.
July 11, 2023
Pretentious. Every essay quotes some other author, name dropping. Could not empathize with any of the observations.
January 3, 2024
I liked some of the essays and some others lost me. Will come back to it in a few months.
December 24, 2024
this was a lovely read! recommended for when you have time to stop and ponder. favs: 'how to herd', 'how to riff', 'how to elude your captors', 'how to come back to life'
Read
November 18, 2025this was just marvelous……. the ending of the fourth essay made me burst into tears
Read
January 29, 2024not going to rate but the author was my professor several years ago so it was cool to stumble upon this collection in the wild
May 16, 2025
“When I ask people to look at things. I am really asking them to look at me, a delicate thing to ask.”
October 13, 2022
Interesting philosophical pieces that think and theorise about phenomena - my kind of read, though I don't think I'll be keeping it on my shelf as it doesn't feel too developed.
November 30, 2021
On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays by Emily Ogden is an intriguing and engaging collection of essays.
These essays are less about making a point than about generating thought. Not to say that points aren't made, they are, but what I took away from most of the essays had less to do with the details of her work and more to do the ideas they stirred within me. This may not make much sense but I seemed to think of many of them as thought experiments. By that I mean I would use something in the essay, maybe an incident (or collection of incidents) or maybe a concept, then following very roughly the path she starts down I would pose my own thought experiments and wander that path for a while. Just to be clear (well, maybe not clear but as close as I come) I still travelled her path with her, the essays engaged me as essays, it is just that they also became starting points for my own thinking.
This is a fairly short book with seventeen essays, so it could be a quick read. I would suggest, however, that you read one at a time and give each some thought. Maybe just a few minutes, maybe let it percolate for a day. I read one a day and for most of the essays it stayed in the back of my mind all day, sometimes giving events of that day a new perspective. Like any collection, some will speak more powerfully to you than others, but if you give each some thought I think even those you find less appealing will still be rewarding.
I would recommend this the readers who enjoy essays, especially essays that speak to the intersection of the concrete with the abstract.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
These essays are less about making a point than about generating thought. Not to say that points aren't made, they are, but what I took away from most of the essays had less to do with the details of her work and more to do the ideas they stirred within me. This may not make much sense but I seemed to think of many of them as thought experiments. By that I mean I would use something in the essay, maybe an incident (or collection of incidents) or maybe a concept, then following very roughly the path she starts down I would pose my own thought experiments and wander that path for a while. Just to be clear (well, maybe not clear but as close as I come) I still travelled her path with her, the essays engaged me as essays, it is just that they also became starting points for my own thinking.
This is a fairly short book with seventeen essays, so it could be a quick read. I would suggest, however, that you read one at a time and give each some thought. Maybe just a few minutes, maybe let it percolate for a day. I read one a day and for most of the essays it stayed in the back of my mind all day, sometimes giving events of that day a new perspective. Like any collection, some will speak more powerfully to you than others, but if you give each some thought I think even those you find less appealing will still be rewarding.
I would recommend this the readers who enjoy essays, especially essays that speak to the intersection of the concrete with the abstract.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
May 21, 2023
This book of short philosophical essays caught my attention at the library. I found some of the topics of the essays quite intriguing: how to listen, how to love, how to hope...
However the language of the essays was too difficult to grasp - the message was lost in the medium. After a few essays I had to put the book down.
However the language of the essays was too difficult to grasp - the message was lost in the medium. After a few essays I had to put the book down.
April 27, 2023
Circuitous, volatile
March 28, 2024
I wanted to like it and I consumed this rather quickly in hopes that I’d be able to glean more from riding the wave of this little book of essays. There were a few nice turns of phrase and the author leans into her identity as a ‘well read’ author with some ever so slightly less clichè than usual connections, and I enjoyed her perspective and a couple of essays I liked ( special mention to: how to riff & how to have a one night stand)
BUT
This collection disappointed me. It didn’t seem to know itself very well - which is all well and good when thinking about the theme of the essays, but not so much when it comes to inspiring the reader’s hope in its author. Meanings were often lost within paragraphs for the sake of a connection, and the quality of writing wasn’t enough for me to appreciate the way the words were arranged on a given page.
⭐️⭐️ / ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
BUT
This collection disappointed me. It didn’t seem to know itself very well - which is all well and good when thinking about the theme of the essays, but not so much when it comes to inspiring the reader’s hope in its author. Meanings were often lost within paragraphs for the sake of a connection, and the quality of writing wasn’t enough for me to appreciate the way the words were arranged on a given page.
⭐️⭐️ / ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
May 25, 2022
3.5 stars
i really enjoyed this collection. many of the essays were thought-provoking and all of them were well-written. it was very easy to follow and understand which is uncommon when it comes to essay collections. anyone could read Clark's essays and understand the motif in each of them. it was also filled with literary references to things i know and love which was exciting. i had a lot of fun reading and analyzing this book.
an in-depth review will be shared on @ReadingBunnies on Instagram soon
thank you, NetGalley for a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.
CW: SA, sexism
i really enjoyed this collection. many of the essays were thought-provoking and all of them were well-written. it was very easy to follow and understand which is uncommon when it comes to essay collections. anyone could read Clark's essays and understand the motif in each of them. it was also filled with literary references to things i know and love which was exciting. i had a lot of fun reading and analyzing this book.
an in-depth review will be shared on @ReadingBunnies on Instagram soon
thank you, NetGalley for a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.
CW: SA, sexism
October 30, 2023
I couldn’t get on with this book… until I really got on with it. Ogden seems to write the essays with a curious but ultimately resigned tone. I didn’t realise until the end of the book how comforting this was because there was no pretence about answering the questions posed as the tongue-in-cheek ‘how to’ titles of each chapter. The resolve to the unknown in the essays - particularly in the last four chapters - was deeply satiating. I am not sure why. And I see why other readers might find that this book doesn’t quite land with them. It is a deeply personal read that may or may not ring true to your own beliefs. For me, it did.
favourite pages: 98, 100 and 101.
favourite pages: 98, 100 and 101.
April 23, 2023
I think a younger version of myself - six, seven years ago - might’ve loved this book fully. Its poetic sentences, crafty (obscure) literary references, would’ve made sense to me. But I’ll always love personal writing that uses life, just life, to face down unresolvable questions. It was a text that reminded me, in a way similar to the way Charles Wright’s poetry does, that we just don’t know the answers to everything, that time and noticing and seeing work in weird ways, the weirder the better in this life that doesn’t really ever resolve.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews