If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays

by Jill Christman

If This Were Fiction is a love story—for Jill Christman’s long-ago fiancé, who died young in a car accident; for her children; for her husband, Mark; and ultimately, for herself. In this collection, Christman takes on the wide range of situations and landscapes she encountered on her journey from wild child through wounded teen to mother, teacher, writer, and wife. In these pages there are fatal accidents and miraculous births; a grief pilgrimage that takes Christman to jungles, volcanoes, and caves in Central America; and meditations on everything from sexual trauma and the more benign accidents of childhood to gun violence, indoor cycling, unlikely romance, and even a ghost or two.

Playing like a lively mixtape in both subject and style, If This Were Fiction focuses an open-hearted, frequently funny, clear-eyed feminist lens on Christman’s first fifty years and sends out a message of love, power, and hope.

Genres: Memoir, Essays, Nonfiction

228 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2022

Reviews

[Collette · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this collection of essays, most previously published in literary journals, Jill Christman weaves together the story of her life in honest, beautiful prose. I love the genre of personal essays because they are slices of life that I can both relate to and be entertained by, and I come away feeling like I’ve made a friend.

This collection, divided into three parts, carries Christman’s stories with themes of grief, sexual abuse, motherhood, trauma and love tying them together. We are all, inevitably, products of our experiences, while what we make of them determines how we live. Christman explores her past with deft precision, humor and unique expression. She elevates the profane and gives words to those aching parts inside that too often are stuffed away and unexplored.

In “Going Back to Plum Island,” she travels with a friend to her childhood home off the northeast coast of Massachusetts to confront the memory of the man (and maybe the man himself) who lived next door and sexually abused her from age 6 or 7 to age 12. Though she had done much to heal from this experience, she believed she needed to return in order to put to rest the recurring dreams she was having of him coming back for her, or sometimes, her daughter, who was 9 at the time. This trip plunged her not only back into her nightmare past but immersed her in memories in the way only returning home can. She remembered the good parts as well, and she took those back with her. Because of her bravery, her nightmares then turned into a dream of flying, “I felt completely free and unburdened in a way I never had–not even in dreams.” Home with her own children, she shared the Swedish fish she’d brought back and thought of how she wanted their lives to be, as mothers so often do. “I want [them] to know that it’s okay to tell the truth, to name names and make noise, no matter what. I want them to lay down shame and be brave. I want them to be willing to go back when they know there is something they need to see or set free or reclaim…to remember that the way is forward.”

Her stories on motherhood are authentic and humorous, expressing the universal love and concerns that mothers feel, along with the humor necessary to retain your sanity. In “Googly Eyes” she describes taking her almost three-year-old to urgent care after realizing she’d taken the plastic googly eyes they used for an art project and stuck one up her nose. Once at home, she tries to excavate her daughter’s motive from her, and she simply says, “I thought it would be different.” Christman goes on to muse, “Yes, that’s it! Ella’s assessment explained a lifetime of my own biggest mistakes. I thought it would be different.” So much truth.

She also has a knack for calling out the unjust and shining light on the heart of the matter. In “The Baby and the Alligator,” she observes, “I get that if feels better to imagine that all the bad things happen for a reason, and we are as individuals too smart/ rich/ wily/ modest /white /straight /church-going /sign-reading to get shot or raped or robbed or seized by a wild animal and eaten /crushed /drowned. Empathy is the antidote to judgment, but we are a people who love to point fingers and draw boxes. That terrible thing? That will happen over there…to someone who didn’t follow the rules.” She challenges the widely held belief that tragedy happens because someone deserves it, and has had to reject this same belief when she put it on herself.


Whether she is discussing losing her fiance in a car accident at age 20, traveling to Costa Rica in search of healing or disclosing why her fears spring from past trauma, Christman conveys the beautiful and the aching with perfect integrity. In “The Avocado,” her description of said object is deft and coated in her own loneliness and ache. “A gradation of shade from buttercream near the nut-brown pit to deep-shade-in-the-forest green at the perimeter where flesh meets frame. In one hemisphere, the clinging brown pit glowed gold, a cross-sectioned woman, heavy with child. On the other side, a hollow vacancy, a curvature where something vital had been but was now gone.”

It has been a long time since I’ve laughed, cried, nodded my head and felt a deep welling of empathy from the words of such a gifted writer. Thank you, Jill and thank you to Netgalley and University of Nebraska Press for a chance to read and review this amazing collection in exchange for my honest review.

[Molly Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an absolutely stunning book; it made me cry when I closed the back cover. Christman writes about the most raw and difficult things, like rape, molestation, bulimia, and loss of her fianceé, with the most gorgeous and heartbreaking language. But she also balances it out so well with humor, research, and a quirky individual worldview. Her essays about motherhood made me laugh and took my breath away, and you can trace how her more attachment style of parenting developed out of her own childhood, especially in "Leading the Children out of Town" and the hilarious "The Eleven-Minute Crib Nap". I also loved the romance parts, especially the essay about meeting her husband, "Life's Not a Paragraph". I had read some of these essays in other places, but seeing them here, collected in such a deliberate and thoughtful way under stanzas of the e.e.cummings poem, "since feeling is first" made the various themes stand out: caves, foreign bodies, Pied Pipers, etc. What a beautiful essay collection - read it soon!

[Sarah Southern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank god for grad school because without it I’m not sure I would have found Jill Christman’s hauntingly beautiful essay “The Avocado” or her book of essays “If This Were Fiction.” I’d been told of Christman’s profound writing on grief, and truly, I’ve never read anything quite so eloquent, heart-wrenching while still-hope-laced, and delicately braided.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays is always a gamble for readers but this one is a gem. Author Jill Christman weaves together stories from a difficult life that would be too much for one reader in a straight through narration but because it's served in digestible bites, the reader is given the opportunity to step away and digest before continuing in a natural way.

The writing is superb and her overall humor and positive message is a good take away. Make no mistake, there are some triggering stories in this collection. Christman addresses these terrible atrocities with compassionate reality as one of her best lines to me was "Empathy is the antidote to judgment, but we are a people who love to point fingers and draw boxes." It's easy to say things happen for a reason but then that same thoughts fall apart when turned around to ourselves.

This collection will challenge a reader but overall make them laugh, cry, and examine thoughts on love.

Thanks to Edelweiss+ for the DRC of this title.

[Sarah M. Wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love and fear are so closely coupled together in these essays that you will find yourself aching with the familiar truth of their intimacy. Jill is brilliantly funny and heartbreakingly honest in the way those who are carried and saved by great love can be. It takes so much love to be able to admit our deepest fears about that love being whisked away… especially when we have already experienced it. Jill’s essays are beautiful, tactile portals inside her mind and into her world. So stinking good.

[L Y N N · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an extremely enjoyable collection for me! I have shared several of the life experiences as described by Christman which I believe makes any reading experience more enjoyable.

I truly appreciate her writing style, particularly her internal musings, as well as the connections she makes between herself and others and others' experiences.

Anxious to participate in a writing workshop with her and hopefully start my own writing journey, wherever or whatever that may be for me...

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jill Christman’s book is about her life—being raped, falling in love, grief, PTSD, the struggle to recover herself and her sexuality, falling in love again, miscarriage, becoming a mother and trying to protect her children from every imaginable harm, with them telling her to let them be kids and learn how to gauge the risks they take on their own. Just like she did. Her essays are lyrical and endearing with their phrasing, cadence, voice, longer woven sentences that meander through one meaning into deeper ones, precise descriptions, surprising images, and humor. This is intelligent, compassionate, and insightful writing.

[Polly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not stop talking about this book the entire time I was reading it, and still can't, now that I've read it. Her words are so artfully chosen, her stories so human and real. Everyone who has been -- or has loved -- a mother, a child, a human being, for heaven's sake... I believe nearly every reader will connect in a meaningful way. They are beautiful slices of humanity, these stories. I highly recommend this book!

[Mackenzie]

Wow.
Jill Christman came to BYU as part of the English Reading Series, where she read some selections from this book and answered questions after.
Before class, I read “The Googly Eye” and was so impressed by her humor and skill at weaving descriptive stories with reflective thoughts.
And then she read her own work with a wry tone and her personal emotional connection and added background information.
And then I read this whole book and got to know her even better. She is such a talented writer.

Why is violence against women so disgusting and disturbing but engaging? I hate that such awful things are part of her life, but I love what she does with them. I love that she said in the Q&A that she writes to answer questions she has. And I love how each essay offered a different perspective but also a culminating message of continual processing and understanding and how life can matter so much.

It’s also so impressive that she does tell so many moments of her life without telling her whole life story all together.
I really liked that it was not chronological.

Favorite parts
page 44 “Does parenting make a good kid?” This whole paragraph. I love the rhetorical questions and the offered alternative situations that may not fit in someone’s definition and that it felt like me questioning a point until you get to the root that it is complex and indeterminate.

page 51 “With more than a little shame, I recognize that the lessons I’d been learning in Women’s Studies 101 about the patriarchy perpetuating woman-to-woman competition hadn’t exactly sunk in.”
I loved the thread of feminism throughout this book and her analysis of how she learned and grew in feminism and how she has continued to understand issues and better support others when processing her own experiences (especially with sexual assault @“Naked Underneath Our Clothes”

page 180 “If I could return to that room with those young writers, to that moment right after Curls said what she said. - “Maybe if it did actually happen, she deserved it” - I would hear the question and I would hold her gaze…
“Okay,” I would say- without edge, without anger, leaving my lesson plan behind. “Why? Let's talk about what's here that makes us want to distrust and cast judgment on Beard.” And then I would listen.”

So very very good.

I smiled at the Acknowledgments:

“Mightn't this page or two near the end of the book where you've flipped to find your name (hello, you!), or perhaps to glean a little bonus information about the company I keep, be more appropriately called "A Bucket of Gratitude" or "A Tremendous Outpouring of Exuberant Thanks"-or even, simply, "Big Love"?”


In “The Lucky Ones” I lost a bit of interest. It was so much of her pondering worries and existence and felt a little self-help-y? But of course she said it’s her therapy and just because that one essay felt less personally relevant/my style, that’s okay.

[Kate Norcross · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You are the only person on this planet who can tell your story. No one else can do it for you. So, if you don’t do it, your story will never be told.”
Parts of this book made me laugh out loud, while others made me cry. If This Were Fiction is a beautiful collection of essays covering everything from trauma, loss, and grief to love and motherhood. Masterfully weaving together past, present, and possibility in gripping narratives, Christman held me spellbound, heart aching and filling all at once. Every essay was honest, open, and relatable to its very core. Christman did not shy away from difficult topics, instead addressing them in a sensitive and understanding manner. This book made me feel seen.
“If you have a story you need to tell, tell it. Write it down. You can always tell it again later if you want.”
Christman’s prose and imagery brought the scenes and stories to life in full color and detail, her prose drawing you in and pushing you onwards. Once I opened the book, I didn’t want to put it down. This book is almost as far as one can get from my usual preference in books–I tend to drift towards fantasy and young adult fiction, staying far away from nonfiction and “grown-up books.” However, Christman’s engaging stories and insightful connections drew me in and kept me there, feeling wiser once I eventually walked away.
This book contained the stories that I needed to hear, just as much as they needed to be told.

Disclaimer: I wrote this review as part of a graded assignment. Nevertheless, all opinions expressed are mine and mine alone and free from any outside influence.

[Eve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jill Christman has a remarkable talent for explaining the beauty and truth in her own experiences. Her memoir is full of wit and honest emotions. She writes about difficult experiences in her past and how writing has been like a form of therapy for her. She writes, “good writing and good therapy share similar goals and methods. In both, our objective must be to make some sense of a disorderly world… we work our way to a kind of cohesion, an order in the senselessness we can live with” (7-8). The entire book feels like a therapy session or like confiding in a good friend about difficult experiences in the past. Christman writes about dealing with horrible experiences like sexual abuse and grief, but also writes stories about the joys of motherhood and fulfillment. “The Googly-Eye” is a highlight of the collection, a funny snapshot of young motherhood.
Christman blurs past experiences with present revelations. The distance between her memories and her life experiences helped her to see things more objectively and connect it to other experiences in her life. When asked about this in a reading, Christman said that "We return to these moments to ask a question to move forward with new momentum." Even when she doesn't remember exactly what happened, she tells things as truthfully as possible. She referred to her background in fiction writing, which she claimed helped her while writing nonfiction. The title aptly reflects her fiction-like approach to writing her memoir. “If This Were Fiction” is an honest portrayal of the real world with the beautiful prose of fiction.

[Gabrielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW. This was electric, beautiful, fascinating, gorgeously written. A great study in the craft of nonfiction, and just a brilliant read in general. Sometimes a mirror and other times a window. In all ways, exceptional.

"I thought I had written myself through all of this. Isn't that what I'd been telling people? Telling myself? That the writing had healed me? And hadn't I thought my recovery, once achieved, would last forever? … While I'd had my share of therapists in the beginning, I confidently attributed the mother lode of my emotional and psychological health to having written myself through childhood trauma in my first book."

"You are the only person on this planet who can tell your story. No one else can do it for you. So, if you don't do it, your story will never be told. If you have a story you need to tell, tell it. Write it down. You can always tell it again later if you want."

"It's hard to be human, isn't it? We accumulate so much over the years. Sometimes there's more than we can carry alone."

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book of personal essays that are mostly pretty good. A lot of them cover heavy topics- her fiance's death in a car accident in her early twenties, a rape she endured in college, the neighbor who molested her for years as a kid- but there are some lighter ones, too, like one about how her toddler daughter once got a "googly eye" stuck up her nose and had to have it removed by a doctor. I'd read one in The Rumpus that, in part, discusses how she's been afraid of a projector screen falling on her ever since that happened to her nine months pregnant fourth grade teacher, who never returned to school after that incident, and now I'M dying to know what happened to the teacher and her baby!

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have the pleasure of knowing this book’s author, Jill Christman, through my role as an employee of Ball State University, where Jill is on the faculty. In fact, she gifted me a copy of this book, which I found to be such a remarkable read.

Jill is a tremendous writer (we are SO fortunate to have her teaching our students!) and I ended up gobsmacked by all that she has had to endure (from rape to molestation to miscarriage) throughout her life. Despite all of these challenges, Jill has never lost her wonder for the world, which is on full display in these essays that are equal parts humorous and heartbreaking.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

With great respect and appreciation for the trauma Christman writes through and from, sometimes I wanted a break - perhaps that was the point? One bears one's burdens. I love her language and honor the point at which she's arrived after so much difficulty and loss. But I found I longed for more variety in the topics, like Barbara Kingsolver's High Tide in Tucson. I did LOVE the story about the Googley eyes, though, and hat's off to her journey back to Plum Island.

[Eric Diekhans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a powerful series of personal essays. Many of them are raw, as Christman shares the trauma of rape and her fiancé’s death. Make sure you read the final essay, “Spinning.” It will leave you profoundly moved

[Shelbi Tedeschi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely. Wise. Moving. I can’t recommend this collection of essays enough.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just one story, many love stories, and all of them will crack your heart wide open, so that whenenever your life has you feeling submerged, this book will buoy you up and into the light.

[Bethany · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Mixed feelings, much as I generally feel with short story collections (though these are essays with a memoir thread). Most of these essays felt infused with the author’s anxiety.

[Nan Bauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Jill's voice. She's funny, observant, has a great eye for the absurd and the oddly beautiful, and her honesty is cool water on a hard-working day.

[Semaia King · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jill Christman is a fantastic author. She seamlessly discusses difficult topics in her own past such as sexual abuse rape, and loss of loved ones while discussing the beautiful sides of life. Her descriptions take on a poetic view that paints a beautiful picture without losing the reader in metaphor. Her style actively keeps the reader engaged by connecting seemingly random thoughts such as an avocado, a volcano, and giving birth. She breaks up the tension and emotion that is gained during Part 1 by recounting humorous and insightful stories as a mother. Her story of the googly eye not only allows the reader to laugh at the absurdity but showcases Jill’s realization of a constant theme in her life that her young daughter is now experiencing. And, not only recounting her own experiences, Jill finds ways to poetically explain a natural phenomenon or world event, then relate it back to her own life. In so doing, the reader is shown her thought process as well as a new way to view life. Her book is a love story not only to her husband, but to her fiancé who she never married, to her children, and to all other victims of sexual abuse. Jill demonstrates appreciation for the world and a growing appreciation for herself and for her body that she has realized does belong to her. Her stories show her recovery from the reoccurring abuse, even in intimate moments that most other authors would shirk away from. Without having to explicitly define the term love, she exemplifies so many different forms than just the romantical. And, despite her stories jumping around on the timeline of her life so far, she expertly weaves in the information needed so that the reader knows at what point in time she is discussing, as well as building off of previous chapters so that the reader can learn and grow with her.

[Bridgett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely gorgeous book of essays. I know gorgeous is a strange word to use for writing, but it’s right here.