This was a wonderfully personal read which was clearly written straight from the heart. It is heartbreakingly relatable and enjoyable all at the same time.

An absolutely brilliant collection of essays where no subject is too painful for examination: female pain, infertility, alcoholism, families, and violence (both against women and against the self). Despite these heavy topics, this memoir does leave the reader feeling great hope. Heartbreaking, but also hopeful.

This year, one of my reading aims was to read more non fiction, and I have read some amazing books. And this one is up there. Emilie writes so raw and honestly. I bookmarked so many passages that spoke to me. I loved this.

What an absolutely brilliant book. Thank you Emilie, a true joy, honest and heartfelt read.

I think everyone should read this book, women and allies alike.

Thank you, truly, thank you. Your story was one to be heard ❤️

I unfortunately didn't read past the first couple of chapters, I found the writing style cumbersome to my needs

This is an intense and deeply personal series of essays written with a great deal of emotional honesty. The author reveals things about her past, never shying away from difficult emotions, exposing her vulnerabilities in a heartbreaking and brave manner. Many of her experiences, especially the misspent teens/early 20s, struck a chord with me. This cannot have been an easy book to write, exposing ones most painful experiences to public scrunity, but I am inspired by the author's determination, strength and self-awareness.

An honest, heartbreaking and hard impacting book to read. So many life moments that will resonate with the reader. How much can one person go through?

A book of essays about feminism, growing up, depression, stress and families. I’ll be thinking about it for a very, very long time.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.

I am in charge of the senior library and work with a group of Reading Ambassadors from 16-18 to ensure that our boarding school library is modernised and meets the need of both our senior students and staff. It has been great to have the chance to talk about these books with our seniors and discuss what they want and need on their shelves. I was drawn to his book because I thought it would be something different from the usual school library fare and draw the students in with a tempting storyline and lots to discuss.
This book was a really enjoyable read with strong characters and a real sense of time and place. I enjoyed the ways that it maintained a cracking pace that kept me turning its pages and ensured that I had much to discuss with them after finishing. It was not only a lively and enjoyable novel but had lots of contemporary themes for our book group to pick up and spend hours discussing too.
I think it's important to choose books that interest as well as challenge our students and I can see this book being very popular with students and staff alike; this will be an excellent purchase as it has everything that we look for in a great read - a tempting premise, fantastic characters and a plot that keeps you gripped until you close its final page.

I have to say the blurb makes this sound like a misery fest, but that is very far from the truth. This is a brilliant book – emotional, insightful, intelligent, terribly sad in places but a joy to read. In a world where there are so many bad books, so much badly written TV, endless remakes of mediocre films, it’s easy to sometimes forget that there is still real talent out there, and Ms Pine’s voice is like a breath of fresh air.

There were things here that really resonated with me, but even those experiences I didn’t identify with were still so beautifully written, so informative, so honest and real.

One of my favourite books of the year.

I don’t usually read non fiction but this book was recommended to me and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to read it, A wonderful captivating and emotional read .

A collection of 6 essays detailing some difficult subject matter and the raw emotions that go with those situations. I have to be honest and say that sometimes it was hard reading but it is well worth the read. THere are some emotive subjects covered, sexual violence, alcoholism, infertility and still birth. I'm pretty sure that most women will be able to relate to at least one of these situations. It is insightful to read how the author coped in each of the situations.

This is an incredibly interesting series of essays that may be a little honest and direct for some. Personally I enjoyed the level of honesty, as well as the style and tone of writing. These essays aren't overly sentimental, which suits my tastes.

I would happily buy this for friends and relatives.

Really wonderful read of the compassion and tenderness between a parent and child. Lovely book. Also revealing about how we treat the old and sick.

This novel is small but mighty, moving and incredibly poignant.

Pine is candid, courageous and this thought-provoking memoir struck a chord with me. I think it should be a necessary read for every woman (just don't read it in public I absolutely cried my eyes out!).

Written with refreshing honesty of all the things we should talk about but don't we need more of, it's a complex accessible read that is ultimately uplifting.

Thank-you Penguin Books UK & Netgalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an open & honest review.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I want to recommend this to all the women I know. Pine writes beautifully and her honesty is at times shocking, as she illuminates the experiences women are supposed to hide—from addiction, anger, sexual assault, and infertility to joy, sensuality, and love.

Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist’s arm-chair and confuse his ‘Rinse the mouth—rinse the mouth’ with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us—when we think of this, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.

Virginia Woolf 1930 On Being ill Hogarth house


“What if my body could tell the story? What would it say? I think it would talk about blood. Its mesmerising flow and its ebb. About ending and renewing. I think it would talk about the touch of my fingers and my hands and another’s lips. The feel of skin on skin. Wet and slow. Soft and hard. The shock of cold, the pleasure of warmth. I think it would talk about the delight of orgasm and the delight of laughter and the delight of sating hunger. About tasting sharp and spicy, soothing and creamy. I think it would talk about looking out and pulling in. I think it would talk about perfume and stink. About clean and dirty. I think it would talk about illness and recovery, about fortitude …. I think it would talk about loss and grief. About standing solo and holding together. About longevity and transformation. About satisfaction. About happiness. About joy. I think it would sound strong. I think it would sound loud. I think it would sound proud.” P. 130

Emily Pine 2019

Notes to self by Emily Pine foregrounds the embodied, every day, experiences of being an adult woman living in the 21st century. Exploring, physicality, pain, grief and hope, these essays vividly bring the modern world to life. We are all made up of mind and body. However, they are not two spheres. They are two interconnected parts of one organism. Each part shaping, delineating, and limiting the other. We are both; our mind and body. Their interconnections and interactions shape our very being. Yet, as Virginia Woolf argues, the body, and its weaknesses, are often ignored in literature. However modern female writers, such as Emily Pine, are writing about the body. In this study Pine writes to, and about, the self; a self-description that acknowledges the body. She writes of; the sick body, the caring body, the childless body, the mothering body, and the ageing body.

The first essay, NOTES ON INTEMPERANCE, (p.3) looks at her relationship with her alcoholic father. The story begins at her father’s sickbed. We see Pine’s experiences of caring for a sick father who is suffering from the effects of a life spent with ‘alcohol. The essay then hovers between past and present, looking at how her father’s alcoholism affected our authors; childhood, adulthood, and her relationship with her troubled parent. This essay moves seamlessly from: heartbreakingly moving, through the darkly funny, to a place of peace and hopefulness. This essay, like the rest of the collection, is, at once, painfully honest and compellingly hopeful. In addition, these essays do not flinch on the physical detail. Such as the humiliation faced by her sick father when he does not receive the care he needs “By the time we find him, he has been lying in a small pool of his own shit for several hours.” (Pine 2019; p.3.]


The second essay FROM THE BABY YEARS (p. 39] explores the author’s attempts to have a child and to come to terms with her body’s inability to conceive. The essay does not shy away from a description of the physical ordeal suffered by Pine as she goes through the process of IVF and the ordeal of the physical, invasive exams undergone by a woman who is trying to have a child; “I pee on sticks and into sample cups. I pee on my own hand when the stream won’t obey. I open my legs wide for sex, for the doctor’s speculum. I hold my arm out for needles and blood pressure monitors and sometimes to grasp onto my partner as he sits next to me.” (Pine 2019; p39]. She is honest about her feelings. Firstly, she is thoughtfully honest about her indecision regarding motherhood “together we talked, almost nostalgically, about our lives as people who loved quiet, and calm, and the space to read and write. On the page those may seem like little virtues, but that list represented for me, for us, a peaceful, happy, fulfilling life. A child would mean giving all that up for years. Would it be worth it?” (ibid 39-40). Secondly, she is viscerally honest about her yearning for motherhood “I am fearful and hopeful and shameful. I worry that I am empty, or that I am full of the wrong things. I worry that I am disappearing, eroding, failing. I do not know what to do with all these feelings. I only want to be a mother. Why is that so easy for some people and so hard for others? Why is it so hard for me?” ibid


These essays foreground the embodied, every day, experiences of being an adult woman living in the 21st century. Exploring illness, physicality, pain, grief and hope, these essays vividly bring the modern world to life. Brutally honest, viscerally physical, and ultimately hopeful; these essays make for powerful reading.

Notes to Self is a collection of essays chronicling the author's life experiences. Written with perception, the author describes her father's battle with alcoholism and liver disease; her parent's separation when she was a child; her battle with loneliness as a teenager and subsequent rebellion and eating disorder; infertility and menopause. A thought provoking and intelligent read.

I read Notes to Self in one sitting, it’s that good. Emilie Pine writes with such brutal honesty that I can feel her pain and there are many parts of her memoir that resonate with parts of my own life. Having lived through similar experiences, at times it is a difficult read but worth it.

*** ARC provided by Netgalley via the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ***

This is an extremely honest, raw collection of essays from Emilie Pine focused on the trials and tribulations of being a woman. I absolutely have time for this type of book, hearing women speak openly about subjects where we’re expected to keep quiet, i.e. infertility, miscarriage, menstruation.

What I like about this book is that Emilie identifies and points out her privilege (white, heterosexual, cis-gender) and is aware that thing could be a lot worse. However, like the rest of us, she can only speak this honestly about her own personal truths and not be expected to be an ambassador for all women.

This book is well written and a quick thoughtful read. Essays feels a little strong as a description, as this feels more like a memoir written in individual intimate stories.