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The Light Room
“Kate Zambreno has invented a new form. It is a kind of absolute present, real life captured in closeup.“ —Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
From “one of our most formally ambitious writers” (Esquire), a moving account of caretaking in a time of uncertainty and loss
In The Light Room, Zambreno offers her most profound and affecting work a candid chronicle of life as a mother of two young daughters in a moment of profound uncertainty about public health, climate change, and the future we can expect for our children. Moving through the seasons, returning often to parks and green spaces, Zambreno captures the isolation and exhaustion of being home with a baby and a small child, but also small and transcendent moments of beauty and joy. Inspired by writers and artists ranging from Natalia Ginzburg to Joseph Cornell, Yūko Tsushima to Bernadette Mayer, Etel Adnan to David Wojnarowicz, The Light Room represents an impassioned appreciation of community and the commons, and an ecstatic engagement with the living world.
How will our memories, and our children’s, be affected by this time of profound disconnection? What does it mean to bring new life, and new work, into this moment of precarity and crisis? In The Light Room, Kate Zambreno offers a vision of how to live in ways that move away from disenchantment, and toward light and possibility.
From “one of our most formally ambitious writers” (Esquire), a moving account of caretaking in a time of uncertainty and loss
In The Light Room, Zambreno offers her most profound and affecting work a candid chronicle of life as a mother of two young daughters in a moment of profound uncertainty about public health, climate change, and the future we can expect for our children. Moving through the seasons, returning often to parks and green spaces, Zambreno captures the isolation and exhaustion of being home with a baby and a small child, but also small and transcendent moments of beauty and joy. Inspired by writers and artists ranging from Natalia Ginzburg to Joseph Cornell, Yūko Tsushima to Bernadette Mayer, Etel Adnan to David Wojnarowicz, The Light Room represents an impassioned appreciation of community and the commons, and an ecstatic engagement with the living world.
How will our memories, and our children’s, be affected by this time of profound disconnection? What does it mean to bring new life, and new work, into this moment of precarity and crisis? In The Light Room, Kate Zambreno offers a vision of how to live in ways that move away from disenchantment, and toward light and possibility.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 4, 2023
47 people are currently reading
2327 people want to read
About the author
Kate Zambreno
28 books791 followersKate Zambreno is the author of the novels Green Girl (Harper Perennial) and O Fallen Angel (Harper Perennial). She is also the author of Heroines (Semiotext(e)'s Active Agents) and Book of Mutter (Semiotexte(e)'s Native Agents). A collection of talks and essays, The Appendix Project, is forthcoming from Semiotext(e) in April 2019, and a collection of stories and other writing, Screen Tests, is forthcoming from Harper Perennial in June 2019. She is at work on a novel, Drifts, and a study of Hervé Guibert. She teaches at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
March 19, 2023
Very meditative and precise. Insular. Compelling.
August 1, 2024
Lecturer, novelist and critic Kate Zambreno’s diaristic account of living through the pandemic years with a toddler and a new baby. A project she initially dubbed “a notebook of seasons and exhaustions.” Thoughts and scenes that centre on what she’s referred to as “translucencies,” her impressions of a time of “being spread thin…almost translucent…an almost mystical postpartum exhaustion.” Zambreno’s explorations of her exhaustion, her anxieties, juggling two daughters in a cramped Brooklyn apartment, is unflinchingly unsentimental yet somehow graceful, filled with flashes of creativity and unanticipated joys. Zambreno’s writings made me think of Virginia Woolf’s famous notion that women writers need both money and a room of their own. Zambreno, mothering two small children, has neither a room of her own – or to herself – or much in the way of money, yet still she writes. Here chronicling snatched moments, her ideas about art and literature; and about care as a form of unrecognised artwork, making a plea for domestic and emotional labour to be understood as something that has meaning beyond the purely practical or transient.
Precarity is an ongoing consideration Zambreno, unlike Woolf, has no need to feel like a trespasser on hallowed academic ground, but as an adjunct professor her status as a lecturer’s distinctly marginal. She has no job security, no right to parental/maternity leave of any kind - once pandemic restrictions are over, she’s forced to beg to briefly resume teaching via Zoom so she can tend to her sick daughters. The domestic space Zambreno’s family inhabits is equally precarious, the spectre of her exacting, uncaring landlord looms large, glimpsed through the leaky radiators that mean the apartment freezes in winter, the rat-infested garden the landlord refuses to clear of rubbish and debris. It’s a living space that embodies key features of contemporary capitalism, the ways in which homes have come to represent not sanctuary but profit for the few, uncertainty for far too many others. It’s telling that when Zambreno wants to repaint scarred and faded walls, she’s only allowed white paint: a colour that’s come to signify neutrality, a marker of how residential property’s more often tied to the potential for increasing wealth, for ease of transferability, than to self-expression or aesthetic pleasure. Something further underlined by Zambreno’s accumulation of Ikea containers housing her children’s toys, many of her possessions, explicitly designed to be moved from space to space at short notice, leaving no traces behind.
Just as Zambreno’s home’s not her own, its actual rooms are shared, cluttered, she often works on the edge of a sofa, or perched with her laptop balanced on her daughter’s tiny desk. Her body too is shared, the boundaries between herself and her children constantly blurred. Zambreno, like so many writers, is rich in cultural capital but not economic, living from pay cheque to pay cheque. Yet this culture is what sustains her, toys scattered across the main room lead to thoughts on Joseph Cornell alone in his family’s home constructing his boxes of light and dark, repurposing small and found objects to form new, imagined constellations. Tending to her children on excursions to Prospect Park to see the flowers bloom conjure images of Derek Jarman tending his Dungeness Garden. Thinking about the art of writing memoirs becomes tangled up with meditations on forms of nurture then to David Wojnarowicz’s diaries and his care for his dying mentor and former lover.
Zambreno’s descriptions of the ad hoc communities formed during the pandemic by parents, mostly mothers, gathering in a nearby park to talk and provide their children with a connection to nature, form a snapshot of the neighbourhood micro-culture of this liberal area of New York – not dissimilar to London’s Stoke Newington it’s a space that first attracted artists and creators, then an influx of monied, rapid gentrifiers hoping to cash in on the atmosphere these earlier inhabitants crafted. Musings on communities segue into discussions of intentional artist communities like the one close to a New York harbour where Agnes Martin produced her early artworks. Meditations on translucency, on witnessing her children’s shifting interactions with the world around them, are partially shaped by imagery found in Zambreno’s reading: from Yūko Tsushima to Bernadette Mayer, Tove Jansson and Natalia Ginzburg. Zambreno’s nurturing extend beyond her family to the students taking her course on literature and climate change, ideas from which flow both ways – shaping her understanding of her urges to do the “right” things for her daughters, to provide the “right” kinds of food, playthings, clothes, but also causing her to reflect on how unaffordable these desires can be – even miniature toys that aren’t mass-produced or made to have low environmental impacts are prohibitively expensive. Overall, lucid, exquisitely-observed, realistic yet confiding and often oddly consoling. A book to savour.
Precarity is an ongoing consideration Zambreno, unlike Woolf, has no need to feel like a trespasser on hallowed academic ground, but as an adjunct professor her status as a lecturer’s distinctly marginal. She has no job security, no right to parental/maternity leave of any kind - once pandemic restrictions are over, she’s forced to beg to briefly resume teaching via Zoom so she can tend to her sick daughters. The domestic space Zambreno’s family inhabits is equally precarious, the spectre of her exacting, uncaring landlord looms large, glimpsed through the leaky radiators that mean the apartment freezes in winter, the rat-infested garden the landlord refuses to clear of rubbish and debris. It’s a living space that embodies key features of contemporary capitalism, the ways in which homes have come to represent not sanctuary but profit for the few, uncertainty for far too many others. It’s telling that when Zambreno wants to repaint scarred and faded walls, she’s only allowed white paint: a colour that’s come to signify neutrality, a marker of how residential property’s more often tied to the potential for increasing wealth, for ease of transferability, than to self-expression or aesthetic pleasure. Something further underlined by Zambreno’s accumulation of Ikea containers housing her children’s toys, many of her possessions, explicitly designed to be moved from space to space at short notice, leaving no traces behind.
Just as Zambreno’s home’s not her own, its actual rooms are shared, cluttered, she often works on the edge of a sofa, or perched with her laptop balanced on her daughter’s tiny desk. Her body too is shared, the boundaries between herself and her children constantly blurred. Zambreno, like so many writers, is rich in cultural capital but not economic, living from pay cheque to pay cheque. Yet this culture is what sustains her, toys scattered across the main room lead to thoughts on Joseph Cornell alone in his family’s home constructing his boxes of light and dark, repurposing small and found objects to form new, imagined constellations. Tending to her children on excursions to Prospect Park to see the flowers bloom conjure images of Derek Jarman tending his Dungeness Garden. Thinking about the art of writing memoirs becomes tangled up with meditations on forms of nurture then to David Wojnarowicz’s diaries and his care for his dying mentor and former lover.
Zambreno’s descriptions of the ad hoc communities formed during the pandemic by parents, mostly mothers, gathering in a nearby park to talk and provide their children with a connection to nature, form a snapshot of the neighbourhood micro-culture of this liberal area of New York – not dissimilar to London’s Stoke Newington it’s a space that first attracted artists and creators, then an influx of monied, rapid gentrifiers hoping to cash in on the atmosphere these earlier inhabitants crafted. Musings on communities segue into discussions of intentional artist communities like the one close to a New York harbour where Agnes Martin produced her early artworks. Meditations on translucency, on witnessing her children’s shifting interactions with the world around them, are partially shaped by imagery found in Zambreno’s reading: from Yūko Tsushima to Bernadette Mayer, Tove Jansson and Natalia Ginzburg. Zambreno’s nurturing extend beyond her family to the students taking her course on literature and climate change, ideas from which flow both ways – shaping her understanding of her urges to do the “right” things for her daughters, to provide the “right” kinds of food, playthings, clothes, but also causing her to reflect on how unaffordable these desires can be – even miniature toys that aren’t mass-produced or made to have low environmental impacts are prohibitively expensive. Overall, lucid, exquisitely-observed, realistic yet confiding and often oddly consoling. A book to savour.
May 21, 2025
Unfortunately, I have decided that Kate Zambreno is not for me. It's a little hard for me to put my finger on exactly why. She's smart. She writes well. She cares about her family. She cares about art and literature and speaks of them with some authority. So what's not to like? I should be part of her fan club, but I'm not. I think perhaps she is a little too tightly wound for me, too concerned about getting it right, too concerned about raising her daughters the right way. She doesn't have the ease, the flow, the charm that I wished I could find in her writing and that would make me fall in love with her as a reader.
At the same time that I read this one, I have been reading "The Long Form" by Kate Briggs, which is also about a mother's relationship with her new-born daughter, which is reflected and refracted through the lens of literature as the new mom reads "Tom Jones" in her brief moments apart from her daughter. In that book the mother/daughter relationship is much closer, more intense, more compassionate than in Ms. Zambreno's book, and the connection to literature is organic to the mother/daughter story, not just the musings of the smart mother about life and culture. It's a totally different reading experience. To be honest I wasn't loving Ms. Briggs' book when I started it. It was only when I picked up "The Light Room" and felt dissatisfied with it that I began to understand what an accomplishment "The Long Form" is.
At the same time that I read this one, I have been reading "The Long Form" by Kate Briggs, which is also about a mother's relationship with her new-born daughter, which is reflected and refracted through the lens of literature as the new mom reads "Tom Jones" in her brief moments apart from her daughter. In that book the mother/daughter relationship is much closer, more intense, more compassionate than in Ms. Zambreno's book, and the connection to literature is organic to the mother/daughter story, not just the musings of the smart mother about life and culture. It's a totally different reading experience. To be honest I wasn't loving Ms. Briggs' book when I started it. It was only when I picked up "The Light Room" and felt dissatisfied with it that I began to understand what an accomplishment "The Long Form" is.
July 8, 2023
The majority of the book felt a bit like a parenting blog (albeit one with an extended interest in art criticism). Were you a new parent, in New York, during the pandemic? Do you like art? You might enjoy this, though it might also just re-trigger your trauma from that time. For everyone else: it's not uninteresting but your time might be better directed elsewhere.
I felt like the opening essay came closest to what the book seems like it's trying to achieve, exploring the sense of claustrophobia created both by the pandemic and the domestic, particularly during new motherhood, and finding parallels in the boxes made by Joseph Cornell, and how what starts out as confinement can open up into a sense of attention and contentment, at least in hindsight.
The later pieces, though, felt like they just kept nodding towards this concept. And there were gestures toward other artists providing us ways to understand the particular experiences the author is going at pains to document, but the connections never really added up to much for me. The links between Wojnarowicz, childhood development, and ecological concern were mostly underdeveloped, which was a disappointment.
I felt like the opening essay came closest to what the book seems like it's trying to achieve, exploring the sense of claustrophobia created both by the pandemic and the domestic, particularly during new motherhood, and finding parallels in the boxes made by Joseph Cornell, and how what starts out as confinement can open up into a sense of attention and contentment, at least in hindsight.
The later pieces, though, felt like they just kept nodding towards this concept. And there were gestures toward other artists providing us ways to understand the particular experiences the author is going at pains to document, but the connections never really added up to much for me. The links between Wojnarowicz, childhood development, and ecological concern were mostly underdeveloped, which was a disappointment.
November 13, 2023
My partner and I sometimes reminisce about the pandemic, how distant and crazy it all seems now, how weird and endless it felt then. Our thoughts on that period of time are mostly positive, which is, of course, such a privileged position to take - we both were undergraduate students then, we didn’t lose our jobs, didn’t have to raise children. We didn’t get seriously ill or lose anyone close to Covid.
Because of this, going into Zambreno’s The Light Room was like putting on somebody else’s glasses or looking through a tinted window. I suddently understood that I was looking to not-so-distant past from a completely different point of view than my own (I love literature for making that possible!).
In this book, Zambreno muses on her experiences of bringing up children during the pademic while not having parental leave and constantly working and worrying about her family, the future, the world, the planet. Climate change anxiety is always there too, in between the lines of this book, as well as the fascination of nature and art and childhood.
To cope with that anxiety and the struggles of contemporary motherhood in the USA, Zambreno’s narrator reads books (Yūko Tsushima’s The Territory of Light and Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon), writes about artists (Joseph Cornell and David Wojnarowicz mostly) and reflects on her day-to-day experiences as a mother, as a teacher, as a writer.
I admit, I have a soft spot for Zambreno’s writing, her calm, intellectual and a bit snobbish voice. So it isn’t weird at all that I enjoyed this book immensely - I think it captures the thoughts and feelings many of us had during the pandemic very well, while at the same time shining light to the struggles of contemporary mothers and fathers (especially in the USA, but Europe is getting there too).
“But isn’t there a way, she asks him, to argue for art that is about taking care of others? She wonders if that is partially what she’s writing about: that there’s art, or at least a contemplative life, to be found in care work. That there can be great meaning in such labor, which is undervalued and underrecognized.” (p. 237)
“But wasn’t that also on the lock screen of her phone - her own photo, the curly heads of two little girls from last summer, in the matching denim dungarees, near the water, poking their sticks in the mud? They remind her so much of her and her little sister, one dark and one fair. Wasn’t this what she was thinking about? That that moment didn’t exist anymore? That it exists only in the impossible space of that photograph - in that room of light.” (p. 243)
Because of this, going into Zambreno’s The Light Room was like putting on somebody else’s glasses or looking through a tinted window. I suddently understood that I was looking to not-so-distant past from a completely different point of view than my own (I love literature for making that possible!).
In this book, Zambreno muses on her experiences of bringing up children during the pademic while not having parental leave and constantly working and worrying about her family, the future, the world, the planet. Climate change anxiety is always there too, in between the lines of this book, as well as the fascination of nature and art and childhood.
To cope with that anxiety and the struggles of contemporary motherhood in the USA, Zambreno’s narrator reads books (Yūko Tsushima’s The Territory of Light and Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon), writes about artists (Joseph Cornell and David Wojnarowicz mostly) and reflects on her day-to-day experiences as a mother, as a teacher, as a writer.
I admit, I have a soft spot for Zambreno’s writing, her calm, intellectual and a bit snobbish voice. So it isn’t weird at all that I enjoyed this book immensely - I think it captures the thoughts and feelings many of us had during the pandemic very well, while at the same time shining light to the struggles of contemporary mothers and fathers (especially in the USA, but Europe is getting there too).
“But isn’t there a way, she asks him, to argue for art that is about taking care of others? She wonders if that is partially what she’s writing about: that there’s art, or at least a contemplative life, to be found in care work. That there can be great meaning in such labor, which is undervalued and underrecognized.” (p. 237)
“But wasn’t that also on the lock screen of her phone - her own photo, the curly heads of two little girls from last summer, in the matching denim dungarees, near the water, poking their sticks in the mud? They remind her so much of her and her little sister, one dark and one fair. Wasn’t this what she was thinking about? That that moment didn’t exist anymore? That it exists only in the impossible space of that photograph - in that room of light.” (p. 243)
March 22, 2024
3.5 — I’ll continue reading anything Kate Zambreno writes, I just feel very connected to her style and the literary world she’s fleshing out in every work 🕸️
I found some of this boring but other parts amazing and inspiring, like real life baby
I found some of this boring but other parts amazing and inspiring, like real life baby
October 9, 2023
What if there is no longer a room upstairs. No place to hide from the children and seek for inspiration, and find creativity again.
Should you go out, to the park perhaps. Putting toy animals in line, queuing for light, and create play again.
What if there are restrictions, pandemic ones. No time to escape from children nor care, but fail to play creative again.
Should you stay in, order everything online. Unfolding all delivered boxes, step in one of them, lightly, play and create a room again.
What if there are lots of them, boxes. Step in all of them. Be light. Create. Be parent. Play. Create. Again.
Should you go out, to the park perhaps. Putting toy animals in line, queuing for light, and create play again.
What if there are restrictions, pandemic ones. No time to escape from children nor care, but fail to play creative again.
Should you stay in, order everything online. Unfolding all delivered boxes, step in one of them, lightly, play and create a room again.
What if there are lots of them, boxes. Step in all of them. Be light. Create. Be parent. Play. Create. Again.
August 22, 2024
While reading this, I kept feeling like I'd read this before, maybe a dozen times, and then I realized, Oh, right, I just LIVED this like every pandemic-era parent. It's gloomy and not particularly inspiring, although there are some nice bits and observations about Joseph Cornell. The book reminded me of what a total depressive fog progressive urban parents lived in for years. In retrospect, the anxiety doesn't read as wise or protective but just really sad.
March 14, 2024
It was soothing and a real miracle, to read a good book about the here and now of being a mother of small children in the middle of a pandemic. Trying to make it all beautiful, to not loose ones mind, ones self, to still remain a thinking and intelligent person in the middle of caring, to still try to create art, while being a caregiver, to still find the light, no matter, how dark everything seems. On so many levels an important and meaningful book.
Read
September 6, 2023DNF @ 20%
I got a ways into this and thought to myself "Yup, OK, I get the gist." It feels like the author is trying to channel the Japanese novel she mentions frequently--bleak, domestic, full of small moments--but it isn't working for me.
I got a ways into this and thought to myself "Yup, OK, I get the gist." It feels like the author is trying to channel the Japanese novel she mentions frequently--bleak, domestic, full of small moments--but it isn't working for me.
November 8, 2023
The Hall of Ocean Life was one of the finest essays I've read this year, and over-all, I thought this came together much better than Drifts, which I wanted to love but didn't. That said, this was more of a 3.5 star read as a whole. There's an obnoxious amount of repetition. Even a reader who puts the book down for a bit of time and picks it up again will instantly remember that the narrator is raising two small children in a pandemic. Also I kind of have to laugh at the back cover blurb that says "Zambreno has invented a new form." Sorry, but no. This book is actually very successfully and carefully structured, but not inventively so.
August 18, 2025
Edit: August 2025
Updated review 4/5
I am slightly mortified and embarrassed on my initial take on this book, however, I will gladly admit that I wasn’t matured enough to really embrace and understand the books purpose and nuances back in 2023. I had to find more of who I am, which drew me back to revisit this very deeply moving, meditative book. I have been taking very long walks early in the morning and this audiobook (done by Zambreno herself) was heavenly. I eventually shifted into the book itself as I feel like I miss details when I listen to audiobooks. Zambreno is one of my favorite authors - namely because of her meditative approach to writing, but also because of our shared love for people like David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar, Agnes Martin, and many more. Glad to have revisited this book.
Original 2023 Review:
2/5
The Light Room
By Kate Zambreno
I have been a big fan of Kate since I read Drifts. Last year, around September, I saw that she completed this book, and been excited to read it since then. It this then, a bit frustrating to read this chore of a book in reality. But what if, that was Kate’s motivation? What if she wanted to capture the postpartum feelings that can come with child rearing?
Some materials in life, I believe, is best left alone. They happen, but they are indeed not the most captivating and frankly, doesn’t feel the need for repeating. Kate’s exploration of the mundane day to day interactions with her daughters come of cold, an observant without heart. What’s the point of just jotting down things, as a long form book full of list and almost no insights? What is the obsession of gifts being asked around from relatives and her father, only to keep jabbing at him every turn she can? But what if I am looking at it from a pov that’s entirely wrong?
The book is supposed to be on care and on art.
On Art: The art descriptions often are paper thin, which admittedly she was never strong to begin with. But before, she would at least layer in her perspectives on things, and I believe she stripped that special power out of this book. Why? That’s within the On Care part.
On Care: I like to make a swing of things, and wonder why this book, why now. And I want to come to the on care part of the book. Maybe it’s her depiction of care, from arms length. Where she is merely an observant. I remember she wasn’t sure of wanting children back in Drifts. Could this be her way of communicating what care is to her daughters, of what art becomes when there is care in the form of being a parent, and that along this thread, stripping away all that is her - in favour of caregiving? I know in Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom, this caregiving, especially for the mother, is often the given. What if, Kate is bearing witness to this - from her point of view, as well as the readers? How do we take it in?
I wish she could explore a bit more of the interiors of her mind, and I know at times it wouldn’t have been pleasant. But I know it would add a lot of blood that’s clearly drained from this book. Yet, yet, we pour out what’s eating us alive. And it shows at 216 page (of 243 total):
“Still, despite these glimmer, this was the most depressed she had felt since the previous winter, possibly because of the darkness. How private it all felt, the work of parenting, the worry, the exhaustion, the constant labor of nagging, of calming, of mediating between the little ones. So exhausted and burned out, yet still expected to continue.”
It’s a book that meanders, doesn’t leave with much insights, but hellbent on hearing witness to the monotonies that come with being a new parent, that darkness too comes in the picture and it’s an ongoing negotiations - in face with new life in this world. The ambivalence, it’s to be faced, head first.
“She thinks of the sacrifices she’s made for her daughters education, how all of it is labor, even thigh so much of it is also love, and of how often she is made to feel it isn’t real work at all, even though it is.”
It’s a meditative book, and it stirs a lot of conflicting emotions. What better person, than Kate to explore these nuances?
Updated review 4/5
I am slightly mortified and embarrassed on my initial take on this book, however, I will gladly admit that I wasn’t matured enough to really embrace and understand the books purpose and nuances back in 2023. I had to find more of who I am, which drew me back to revisit this very deeply moving, meditative book. I have been taking very long walks early in the morning and this audiobook (done by Zambreno herself) was heavenly. I eventually shifted into the book itself as I feel like I miss details when I listen to audiobooks. Zambreno is one of my favorite authors - namely because of her meditative approach to writing, but also because of our shared love for people like David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar, Agnes Martin, and many more. Glad to have revisited this book.
Original 2023 Review:
2/5
The Light Room
By Kate Zambreno
I have been a big fan of Kate since I read Drifts. Last year, around September, I saw that she completed this book, and been excited to read it since then. It this then, a bit frustrating to read this chore of a book in reality. But what if, that was Kate’s motivation? What if she wanted to capture the postpartum feelings that can come with child rearing?
Some materials in life, I believe, is best left alone. They happen, but they are indeed not the most captivating and frankly, doesn’t feel the need for repeating. Kate’s exploration of the mundane day to day interactions with her daughters come of cold, an observant without heart. What’s the point of just jotting down things, as a long form book full of list and almost no insights? What is the obsession of gifts being asked around from relatives and her father, only to keep jabbing at him every turn she can? But what if I am looking at it from a pov that’s entirely wrong?
The book is supposed to be on care and on art.
On Art: The art descriptions often are paper thin, which admittedly she was never strong to begin with. But before, she would at least layer in her perspectives on things, and I believe she stripped that special power out of this book. Why? That’s within the On Care part.
On Care: I like to make a swing of things, and wonder why this book, why now. And I want to come to the on care part of the book. Maybe it’s her depiction of care, from arms length. Where she is merely an observant. I remember she wasn’t sure of wanting children back in Drifts. Could this be her way of communicating what care is to her daughters, of what art becomes when there is care in the form of being a parent, and that along this thread, stripping away all that is her - in favour of caregiving? I know in Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom, this caregiving, especially for the mother, is often the given. What if, Kate is bearing witness to this - from her point of view, as well as the readers? How do we take it in?
I wish she could explore a bit more of the interiors of her mind, and I know at times it wouldn’t have been pleasant. But I know it would add a lot of blood that’s clearly drained from this book. Yet, yet, we pour out what’s eating us alive. And it shows at 216 page (of 243 total):
“Still, despite these glimmer, this was the most depressed she had felt since the previous winter, possibly because of the darkness. How private it all felt, the work of parenting, the worry, the exhaustion, the constant labor of nagging, of calming, of mediating between the little ones. So exhausted and burned out, yet still expected to continue.”
It’s a book that meanders, doesn’t leave with much insights, but hellbent on hearing witness to the monotonies that come with being a new parent, that darkness too comes in the picture and it’s an ongoing negotiations - in face with new life in this world. The ambivalence, it’s to be faced, head first.
“She thinks of the sacrifices she’s made for her daughters education, how all of it is labor, even thigh so much of it is also love, and of how often she is made to feel it isn’t real work at all, even though it is.”
It’s a meditative book, and it stirs a lot of conflicting emotions. What better person, than Kate to explore these nuances?
July 3, 2023
I loved this book about what it is to be a mother and an artist and to live in time - to feel its dizzying spell, to capture it without sentimentalizing it – a mother who is a writer who collects moments and words as a child might collect toys and farm animals and pony beads – an exquisite meditation on what it means to be alive in a time of uncertainty and precarity, and the complex layered consciousness of mothering, the many small and large ways we dedicate our lives to radical acts of care - making meaning in this always fragile present tense.
August 15, 2023
The ability to channel daily life into literary form is something that Kate Zambreno does quite well. Hers is writing that finds poetry in the mundane life of a writer and academic, she has an observational way that makes the role of writer inspirational. Her latest, The Light Room, finds its inspiration in the intersection of pandemic isolation and motherhood. She's written about being a parent before, and the somewhat cringey comparison to a difficult pregnancy with HIV in To Write as if Already Dead, but this book is laser focused on her two kids, one born in 2020. We get such vivid descriptions of the bins of toys, play dates, forays to Brooklyn parks, etc. Many of these things remind Zambreno of Joseph Cornell and his boxes (the bubble motif), David Wojnarowicz (for his treasure chest of childhood trinkets), Annie Ernaux, Roland Barthes, and others. I generally like the approach of linking art and lit to real life, but not being a parent, I found the references here twee and pretentious. Someone else noted in their review that this was much like a literary version of a motherhood blog and I'd have to agree. You'll get a lot more out of this if you relate to the material. I started skimming two-thirds of the way through.
August 5, 2023
Kate Zambreno definitely has a 'beat' so if you've liked her previous books then this will be up your alley. Personally I have next to no interest in reading about motherhood or Early Childhood Education and YET I found this memoir about both of those things strangely compelling!
It's a cross between a Sebaldian (or Odellian - can we use that for Jenny Odell yet? She's thanked in the acknowledgements) diary of natural observations and a mommy blog that take place over the early months (and then years) of the 2020 pandemic. Recommended if: you too have named your daughters after dead male poets, pay five digit tuition figures to send your kid to a Waldorf kindergarten, live in Brooklyn, need to commiserate about the drudgery of raising and wrangling small children. Other reviewers have mentioned (and I agree) that the type of mom who would most be interested in this book are also likely the ones who aren't yet ready to re-open the wound of being in the early days of lockdown with small children. Harrowing stuff. Your mileage may vary!
It's a cross between a Sebaldian (or Odellian - can we use that for Jenny Odell yet? She's thanked in the acknowledgements) diary of natural observations and a mommy blog that take place over the early months (and then years) of the 2020 pandemic. Recommended if: you too have named your daughters after dead male poets, pay five digit tuition figures to send your kid to a Waldorf kindergarten, live in Brooklyn, need to commiserate about the drudgery of raising and wrangling small children. Other reviewers have mentioned (and I agree) that the type of mom who would most be interested in this book are also likely the ones who aren't yet ready to re-open the wound of being in the early days of lockdown with small children. Harrowing stuff. Your mileage may vary!
November 11, 2023
I think I look to Wojnarowicz and this elegiac period of his, this time he spent thinking and artmaking, because I am trying to figure out, still, for myself, what beauty can come out of mourning, whether the mourning of others can exist alongside the mourning of a dying planet, and whether it is permissible for this mourning to exist alongside an ecstatic contemplation of the natural world.The Light Room by Kate Zambreno
I feel my attention settling for the first time in a long while, in this place that is infinite with detail, with layers and layers of life arrayed before my eyes. It occurs to me that I am resting. It is not the same as doing nothing. Resting like this is something active, chosen, alert, something rare and precious. Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May
My 60 pound puppy stomped on suddenly tender part of my foot, and I whacked myself with my phone as I got up to play with her. My older dog grumbled when I kissed his snout, and I wonder why he is so grouchy, or is it just his voice, the ways he tells me what’s going on. Sometimes when I come home after several hours away he first has to sniff every inch of me to see if I met any other dogs, then he grumbles a little with some higher pitched noises that seem like he is saying, how could you leave us this long and do you know what the puppy did? Every moment is so full. Every minute exhausting, agonizing, with punctures of joy and beauty.
I need to make it into an avant garde movie, mixed with some ethereal music to set the stage of everyday life and its wondrous miracles. Ecstasy, even, when I sit and read and the dogs are sleepy beside me. The music I heard today would be good, it was a cover of Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel, by Forestella, a South Korean quartet with amazing vocal chops and their harmonies are gorgeous. The bass voice is the anchor of the group, and resonates deeply, like it plugs into and vibrates to the sacred harmonic in my spine.
Thinking of chops, I am thinking of trying to cook pork chops in a recipe passed on down from my mother, and I have never bought or cooked pork chops, I wonder if anyone else feels that way also. Food is a heartbreaking issue at times, starvation, gluttony, and eating disorders on a spectrum that cross space and time, and I send lovingkindness to all who are suffering. The self is a kite sometimes without a string, growing tinier and tinier, until sometimes it vanishes.For me, I have to remind myself food is sustenance, of the earth, and not a treat so that I don’t overeat, and I anchor myself in the earth, my feet sometimes, and sometimes my whole body, laying flat, so that I don’t float away.
The beauty of nature and of people doing kind things produce ecstasy in me also. It is a deep terrain, a place of unending variance and subtle meaning. It is different each time you meet it, changing with the seasons, the weather, the life cycles of its inhabitants. Some find hits of ecstasy when they taste a certain flavor or a rich, gorgeous flavor. As Proust riffed on the memories a madeleine unlocked, tastes can also open portals to different us-es, the us we were once, and never again, or if again, still different. The smell of different seashores and seasides and harbors and beaches do it for me. I have been so many me’s in those moments. I miss the feeling that I am entering a vast cathedral, and, rather than sitting in its dry pews, that I am merging with it. I miss how when I feel the pull of the tides, I am also feeling the pull of the whole world, of the moon and the sun; that I am part of a chain of interconnection that crosses galaxies.
Both of these books were misleading, but I am glad that I read them, and am glad that depression and anxiety can be transcended a little bit as they demonstrate, since I know these mental states are increasing in frequencies and my fear is someday they will be the norm. It actually feels that way now as cynicism rules and tries to dominate all others.
My little story is not intended to be a parody at all, it comes in deep respect for both authors and where they go in their words, deep into their experience, and while I could not relate at all, I see where they come from and are going, and inspired a sort of creative writing prompt in me of my morning. Their sentences are in italics or bolded and since I am not a professional writer, it is magnificently awful compared to the books. Just an experiment in creativity. We all are so human and connected.
I feel my attention settling for the first time in a long while, in this place that is infinite with detail, with layers and layers of life arrayed before my eyes. It occurs to me that I am resting. It is not the same as doing nothing. Resting like this is something active, chosen, alert, something rare and precious. Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May
My 60 pound puppy stomped on suddenly tender part of my foot, and I whacked myself with my phone as I got up to play with her. My older dog grumbled when I kissed his snout, and I wonder why he is so grouchy, or is it just his voice, the ways he tells me what’s going on. Sometimes when I come home after several hours away he first has to sniff every inch of me to see if I met any other dogs, then he grumbles a little with some higher pitched noises that seem like he is saying, how could you leave us this long and do you know what the puppy did? Every moment is so full. Every minute exhausting, agonizing, with punctures of joy and beauty.
I need to make it into an avant garde movie, mixed with some ethereal music to set the stage of everyday life and its wondrous miracles. Ecstasy, even, when I sit and read and the dogs are sleepy beside me. The music I heard today would be good, it was a cover of Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel, by Forestella, a South Korean quartet with amazing vocal chops and their harmonies are gorgeous. The bass voice is the anchor of the group, and resonates deeply, like it plugs into and vibrates to the sacred harmonic in my spine.
Thinking of chops, I am thinking of trying to cook pork chops in a recipe passed on down from my mother, and I have never bought or cooked pork chops, I wonder if anyone else feels that way also. Food is a heartbreaking issue at times, starvation, gluttony, and eating disorders on a spectrum that cross space and time, and I send lovingkindness to all who are suffering. The self is a kite sometimes without a string, growing tinier and tinier, until sometimes it vanishes.For me, I have to remind myself food is sustenance, of the earth, and not a treat so that I don’t overeat, and I anchor myself in the earth, my feet sometimes, and sometimes my whole body, laying flat, so that I don’t float away.
The beauty of nature and of people doing kind things produce ecstasy in me also. It is a deep terrain, a place of unending variance and subtle meaning. It is different each time you meet it, changing with the seasons, the weather, the life cycles of its inhabitants. Some find hits of ecstasy when they taste a certain flavor or a rich, gorgeous flavor. As Proust riffed on the memories a madeleine unlocked, tastes can also open portals to different us-es, the us we were once, and never again, or if again, still different. The smell of different seashores and seasides and harbors and beaches do it for me. I have been so many me’s in those moments. I miss the feeling that I am entering a vast cathedral, and, rather than sitting in its dry pews, that I am merging with it. I miss how when I feel the pull of the tides, I am also feeling the pull of the whole world, of the moon and the sun; that I am part of a chain of interconnection that crosses galaxies.
Both of these books were misleading, but I am glad that I read them, and am glad that depression and anxiety can be transcended a little bit as they demonstrate, since I know these mental states are increasing in frequencies and my fear is someday they will be the norm. It actually feels that way now as cynicism rules and tries to dominate all others.
My little story is not intended to be a parody at all, it comes in deep respect for both authors and where they go in their words, deep into their experience, and while I could not relate at all, I see where they come from and are going, and inspired a sort of creative writing prompt in me of my morning. Their sentences are in italics or bolded and since I am not a professional writer, it is magnificently awful compared to the books. Just an experiment in creativity. We all are so human and connected.
Read
September 5, 2023The Light Room started out quite positively for me. I enjoyed the fragmented writing, with short and quick sections that resemble how childcare can cause days to become completely fragmented and disjointed; everything revolving around the child and whatever is about to happen next.
Kate Zambreno has always had a talent for speaking unforcefully about connections and the intertwining of life’s mundanity with the bigger picture. Pulling from artistic interests that imprint themselves onto her mind, Zambreno is able to view minute aspects of day-to-day life through a critical lens that creates some interesting ways of thinking and ideas of philosophy. I think this skill of connecting and attaching, of finding the message in art, is most evident in the first half of the book.
We seem to drop off a little bit as we progress, however. There seemed to be what felt like underdeveloped ideas and connections after the halfway mark. Artists were linked to childhood, memories, and objects, but these links were kept very vague and loose without ever honing in on a point. This isn’t to say that the connections weren’t there, or that the author was wrong to attempt to find them, it just felt unsatisfying that clarity never came. For these latter, more political essays, Zambreno resembles the gymnast during a floor sequence, her moves were adventurous and creative in places, and she’d get points for style, but she never quite stuck the landing.
The switching of narrative perspective is the strong point of the book, for me. We come to realise early on that ideas around claustrophobia, entrapment, time, and solitude are going to be pressed upon in the book, therefore I appreciate how Zambreno moved from first person present tense, to first person past, then third person present. The shifting in the last quarter of the book, to the third person from the first, read to me like a therapeutic exercise that the author carried out for herself. Zambreno goes back over already-trodden ground with a more detached view, which then works to emphasise the entrapped feeling that that the earlier writing in the book has. This felt like suitable experimentation with the writing style, in keeping with the books general themes.
I enjoyed The Light Room, but what felt like a promising start never actually met a satisfying end for me.
Kate Zambreno has always had a talent for speaking unforcefully about connections and the intertwining of life’s mundanity with the bigger picture. Pulling from artistic interests that imprint themselves onto her mind, Zambreno is able to view minute aspects of day-to-day life through a critical lens that creates some interesting ways of thinking and ideas of philosophy. I think this skill of connecting and attaching, of finding the message in art, is most evident in the first half of the book.
We seem to drop off a little bit as we progress, however. There seemed to be what felt like underdeveloped ideas and connections after the halfway mark. Artists were linked to childhood, memories, and objects, but these links were kept very vague and loose without ever honing in on a point. This isn’t to say that the connections weren’t there, or that the author was wrong to attempt to find them, it just felt unsatisfying that clarity never came. For these latter, more political essays, Zambreno resembles the gymnast during a floor sequence, her moves were adventurous and creative in places, and she’d get points for style, but she never quite stuck the landing.
The switching of narrative perspective is the strong point of the book, for me. We come to realise early on that ideas around claustrophobia, entrapment, time, and solitude are going to be pressed upon in the book, therefore I appreciate how Zambreno moved from first person present tense, to first person past, then third person present. The shifting in the last quarter of the book, to the third person from the first, read to me like a therapeutic exercise that the author carried out for herself. Zambreno goes back over already-trodden ground with a more detached view, which then works to emphasise the entrapped feeling that that the earlier writing in the book has. This felt like suitable experimentation with the writing style, in keeping with the books general themes.
I enjoyed The Light Room, but what felt like a promising start never actually met a satisfying end for me.
February 8, 2024
Very much a sequel to Drifts, The Light Room picks up about 4-5 years from where her previous book left off. Now, Zambreno's older daughter is in school, and her younger daughter is a newborn. As in Drifts, Zambreno makes frequent references to other literary figures (often from times past) in order to make sense of her present, pandemic-restricted, economically precarious position as adjunct professor and mother. But the mothering is more central here than it was in her last book. While Drifts was primarily about Zambreno's looping procrastinatory creative thoughts, and coming to terms with being pregnant/a mother, The Light Room is about making sense of the delirium of early motherhood in literary terms. There are many moments with her children that she grasps for words to describe; I particularly appreciated one scene where she is taking a bath with her daughter, and, when the daughter splashes her, she splashes her back, only to have her daughter say: "Mommy, don't be an asshole." In trying to capture some authentic bit of her daughters' childhood, Zambreno writes, "What light, I wonder, will they remember from this time? What light will I?" She also talks about a "sense of layered time as a 'history feeling'". The book is intertextual (Zambreno often structures her own memories around her encounter with another writer or text), centered on emotions, and is perhaps even more critical of class divisions and hypocrisies than the previous one (going to the park one day, Zambreno notes that she is surrounded by "expensive-looking people"). This is also a clear-cut pandemic novel. Perhaps more exquisitely executed than Drifts, given that her narrative attention is less self-centered and myopic, and necessarily more expansive--she has daughters, now.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 9, 2023
2.5 stars. I really wanted to like this so much and I just... didn't. I just couldn't connect the way I did with Drifts. She tries to make reference to the lack of equity in education but it just isn't enough to counter the endless references to victorian children or her baby as peak renaissance baby and her daughter's blue eyes.
I just thought it was all a bit weird. It's possible this was by design, it's just her musings. But when she wonders if "innocence and beauty-- idealized narrowly within a certain class, white and wealthy-- and whether these ideas still influence how young children are photographed." I just have to question if she really wonders that?
There is something to love in reading such an intimate depiction of private domestic life, in making the unseen seen but that's where it ends for me. So many of the references to artists documenting time, the home, their internal life, were men and white. Maybe it was meant to be a juxtaposition but she never talks about it.
There is certainly some overlap on the venn diagram with Camille Dungy's Soil but for me it's a much more current and relevant look at where we are today. I was also this person once with the peg dolls reading Little House on the Prairie, but I'm not any more.
I wanted it to be more intersectional.
I just thought it was all a bit weird. It's possible this was by design, it's just her musings. But when she wonders if "innocence and beauty-- idealized narrowly within a certain class, white and wealthy-- and whether these ideas still influence how young children are photographed." I just have to question if she really wonders that?
There is something to love in reading such an intimate depiction of private domestic life, in making the unseen seen but that's where it ends for me. So many of the references to artists documenting time, the home, their internal life, were men and white. Maybe it was meant to be a juxtaposition but she never talks about it.
There is certainly some overlap on the venn diagram with Camille Dungy's Soil but for me it's a much more current and relevant look at where we are today. I was also this person once with the peg dolls reading Little House on the Prairie, but I'm not any more.
I wanted it to be more intersectional.
December 26, 2024
a catalogue and collection of children’s toys scattered and nature’s filings and trash, of exhaustion and searching for a “sense of illumination” in the every day. yes i agree, a paragraph is a light box!! i felt them while reading, under my strange lamps taken from my grandparent’s basement, in the gray midwest winter. i opened these pages, also searching for the light and meaning in my own dull trapped domestic life: joseph cornell’s assemblage boxes and david wojnarowicz’s magic box, alongside bernadette mayer’s midwinter day, and zambreno’s own children’s nature table. the whale at the museum reminded me of the beluga whale at the city museum in st. louis, where children crawl inside through unexpected tunnels of its smooth body. history and memories that will never exist again, except in tiny objects. pandemic masks and animal masks. taking care of each other as a form of art. how walking through parks defined a time of early pandemic for me too, and how parks encase childhood. making art projects out of beads, and trying to extract one of those beads stuck up a child’s nose. all at once, wonder and curiosity and curated iphone photos, mix together with tears and constant illness and wreckage, rats. “How invisible children have been these two years, because they are seen as outside of capitalism. How better possibilities must exist, for a future for children.”
December 19, 2023
This should totally be my jam. Art and care and early motherhood? Seems like it would be a slam dunk, but I pretty intensely disliked this.
First off, I guess I'm more into writing about making art than art critique. Moreover, she's really interested in assemblage, and boy do I dislike assemblage. I just can't get past how old and greasy and dusty and yellowed they often feel, even when they are none of those things. I know modern art isn't always about the aesthetics, but I'm not deeply enough into art analysis to be able to get past an aesthetic that I hate.
Ok, that out of the way, this was horribly depressing: pandemic with small children in NYC, seemingly as adjunct professors with working conditions that I know all too well, but also keeping up with the absurdly privileged with their private nature schools and obsession with expensive Montessori toys. Reading this with an infant at home was just not fun. She writes a lot about striving to achieve some performative parenting ideal that seems to be making her miserable and that was relatable in theory, but just bummed me out to read about.
I dunno, I guess I wanted some systemic analysis or something to make my brain tingle, not musings on how her house depressed her.
First off, I guess I'm more into writing about making art than art critique. Moreover, she's really interested in assemblage, and boy do I dislike assemblage. I just can't get past how old and greasy and dusty and yellowed they often feel, even when they are none of those things. I know modern art isn't always about the aesthetics, but I'm not deeply enough into art analysis to be able to get past an aesthetic that I hate.
Ok, that out of the way, this was horribly depressing: pandemic with small children in NYC, seemingly as adjunct professors with working conditions that I know all too well, but also keeping up with the absurdly privileged with their private nature schools and obsession with expensive Montessori toys. Reading this with an infant at home was just not fun. She writes a lot about striving to achieve some performative parenting ideal that seems to be making her miserable and that was relatable in theory, but just bummed me out to read about.
I dunno, I guess I wanted some systemic analysis or something to make my brain tingle, not musings on how her house depressed her.
August 29, 2023
Maybe more like 3.5 stars…
Anyway, it’s a beautiful book about mothering and making art during the pandemic; it just would’ve landed more strongly with me if I’d been parenting small children during the pandemic, too. I found the personal sections much more engaging than the passages where she’s musing on the work of other artists. I’m glad the book is out in the world, though.
Some passages I liked:
Later, I had a vague memory of cramming a jack in my nose as a child, and my mother using pepper to get me to sneeze it out. Something made me wonder if this had really happened to me, or if I was somehow experiencing my sister’s childhood memory on my body, as can sometimes happen. My sister confirmed that it happened to her when she was five, and I would have been four. I ask my father if he remembers. He seems never to remember anything about our childhood, although he can recall the smallest details of his own.
She wondered what stage of the pandemic she had reached when she found herself longing for pink linen curtains.
How to describe the claustrophobia and the abundance of the days?
If she were to write a memoir now, she would call it The Melancholy of Laundry.
Anyway, it’s a beautiful book about mothering and making art during the pandemic; it just would’ve landed more strongly with me if I’d been parenting small children during the pandemic, too. I found the personal sections much more engaging than the passages where she’s musing on the work of other artists. I’m glad the book is out in the world, though.
Some passages I liked:
Later, I had a vague memory of cramming a jack in my nose as a child, and my mother using pepper to get me to sneeze it out. Something made me wonder if this had really happened to me, or if I was somehow experiencing my sister’s childhood memory on my body, as can sometimes happen. My sister confirmed that it happened to her when she was five, and I would have been four. I ask my father if he remembers. He seems never to remember anything about our childhood, although he can recall the smallest details of his own.
She wondered what stage of the pandemic she had reached when she found herself longing for pink linen curtains.
How to describe the claustrophobia and the abundance of the days?
If she were to write a memoir now, she would call it The Melancholy of Laundry.
January 28, 2024
This is one of the best books I have read for a long time. It is a hybrid of autofiction and essay. Her writing reminds me of Rebecca Solnit’s. The narrator describes her struggles though Covid. She and her husband have two young children. She explores artists and books that are important to her while at the same time describing the constant exhaustion and anxiety of her life. With many books I read without looking things up online. The Light Room had me on the internet looking at art work and listening to music. I wonder whether this kind of activity is just a distraction or enhances the book. It may be both a distraction and an enhancement. She writes about James Rosenquist who was one of the artists who lived on Coenties Slip at the tip of Manhattan in the late fifties. That inspired me to get a book out of the library called The Slip which chronicles those artists and their time. One of the Slip artists, Agnes Martin, is mentioned in another book I am reading about minimalism. I like it when the books I have selected connect with each other. When I go to Boston this spring I will go to the Boston Museum of Fine Art so I can look at the work of artists from The Slip.
October 14, 2023
This was not quite what I was expecting, but also I'm clearly not the target audience, never having had children. I did like the author's writing style and enjoyed her descriptions of various nature and art encounters, but found my mind wandering with all the parenting text.
The description of the book had mentioned climate change so I was anticipating reflections on that, having wondered how parents with young children deal with that these days. I admit to skimming towards the end of the book so perhaps I missed something.
The description of the book had mentioned climate change so I was anticipating reflections on that, having wondered how parents with young children deal with that these days. I admit to skimming towards the end of the book so perhaps I missed something.
May 10, 2024
I liked this. It's a series of essays about finding light and purpose and the art of caretaking, particularly in a time and place that doesn't really value it or make it easy. She's a little high strung, and that can be a bit disappointing to have to keep confronting. (here we go again about the value of wooden toys, here we go again about the Montessori way, here we go again about nursing the baby) but I do think a lot of care and examination was put into this collection, I think Zambreno really considered her situation and reflected on it and how she relates to art.
November 4, 2025
A joy to read, even if it's mostly about hard times. I find Zambreno's writing and mind fascinating.
I think a lot about Covid how shaped and changed our lives. This is the best book I have found so far that documents daily life during that time. How soon I already forget the ins and outs of Covid days. There were lots of little details that brought back memories.
The last section is written in a strange voice and harder to follow, which I tried not to let detract from the beauty of the early sections.
I think a lot about Covid how shaped and changed our lives. This is the best book I have found so far that documents daily life during that time. How soon I already forget the ins and outs of Covid days. There were lots of little details that brought back memories.
The last section is written in a strange voice and harder to follow, which I tried not to let detract from the beauty of the early sections.
August 31, 2024
kind of a 3.5 for me … perhaps my fault for being such an avid zambreno reader but bears a lot of overlap in theme and topics with her other recent books. she continues to write about the pandemic in a way which devastates me, and the details i already forget like waiting outside the library for no-contact holds pickup. but … didn’t really feel like it got where it was going yet. however i continue to stan
July 23, 2023
I listened to this in one day- the author narrates it herself. The monotony, desperation, trying to be a good mother, keep her family safe, keep some sense of self and sanity comes through clearly as the pandemic raged. I was in a different pandemic situation than a mother with small children, but I felt much empathy for her as she worked hard to bring light into the situation.
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