Absolute admiration for Emilie Pine for bringing forth the reality of life for some people and the pain you can feel through this. This may not flow well at times but you are kept involved through out.

Truthful raw and completely compelling I loved this ordinary memoir of a young girls search for acceptance. Touching maternity, rape, infertility and alcoholism. A must read.

This book wasn't what I expected at all, and I was wondering during the first chapter whether I would continue to read it. But I did and I am so glad I continued. I couldn't put it down (after I got past the first section).
Emilie (There is no Y!) explains the impact of her life as a young woman growing up with an alcoholic father and living as a single parent family in Ireland then London. It is basically an autobiographical collection of essays, and the author opens her heart on the page. Her story is shocking in places, but insightful and full of reflections that most woman could relate to..
Clearly therapeutic for the author, the book led me to reflect on much of my own life, particularly regarding the female body (it is brilliantly detailed) and on what it is to be a professional woman today and how far we still have to go.
Thank you to #NetGalley and to Emilie Pine for giving me the opportunity to read #NotesToSelf
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In this her debut work of non-fiction, part memoire, part treatise and part debate, Emily Pine writes a series of longer essays about women in various situations in modern life. It is entirely from her own point of view although other arguments are sometimes put forward that may be the other side of the story. I’m not entirely sure this was the best way to tackle her chosen subjects, but that in itself is up for debate. I certainly didn’t like the non chronological nature of the way she chose to order her ‘Notes’, which were anything but notes anyway.
The book is split into various subjects and there is no doubt at all about Emilie’s writing ability. She is talented and passionate, knowledgeable and persuasive in her subjects, although I found the writing was uneven throughout the content of this book. I really enjoyed the ‘Notes on Intemperance’ and ‘From The Baby Years’ which I found very poignant and which filled me with compassion, enjoying reading the content very much. These two ‘essays’ took up over half of the book. I cared less for ‘Notes on Bleeding & Other Crimes’ and ‘Something about Me’, which I found very disturbing, challenging and thought provoking. The final part of the book ‘This Is Not An Exam’ was much lighter and filled with humour and an overview of Emilie’s professional life. It also gave a very good outline about her personality, work ethic and the way she perceives that she became her ‘true self’, despite the challenges and setbacks in her life journey. I would have liked being her pupil because she seems to be a great motivator and mentor. She understood the frustration of not having a voice and of the importance of unveiling the less savoury subjects and talking about them.
In her debut she tackles the taboos in life, violence, grief, uncertainty, mental health, alcoholism, abuse, joy, love and relationships (and even more) absolutely straight on, writing with honesty and with a keen eye on truthfulness and transparency. I received a complimentary copy of this novel from publisher Penguin through my membership of NetGalley. These are my own honest and well considered opinions.

Compelling, sometimes heart-breaking, this reads like a novel and is all the more powerful for it. Deserves to be read far and wide, across all ages. I will definitely recommend this to friends and family.

This is an interesting book, talks about difficult topics honestly.
I give it three stars due to the fact that this is not my usual reading choice but I believe that is an important book to read and think about.

Raw, real, honest and beautiful. Absolutely stunning collection of essays. This is definitely one I'll be purchasing for friends - everyone needs to read this.

Unflinching, raw, tremendous. Pine has written with clarity about her experience of the human condition, her bluntness and honesty private yet universal.

An honest, moving collection of essays - moving without being self-indulgent as so many essay collections can be

One of the most honest books I've ever read. The subject matter Emilie deals with in each of her personal essays are incredibly difficult to read and she writes with such unflinching honesty that you will need to keep an extra large box of tissues nearby. This is a raw, brave and incredibly affecting read and one of my books of the year!

I feel that Notes To Self is a self indulgent memoir cleverly disguised as enlightening essays. I say self indulgent because I was often struck by the narcissism of Emilie Pine as she railed against the cruelty of being subjected to uncool clothes, lame sandwiches and being a lonely, misunderstood tearaway teenager. Themes like alcoholism, divorce, infertility, and even rape are served up vividly and unashamedly, to her credit. But there seems to be a void where I expected to read about genuine personal growth and positive female empowerment.

I didn't find anything more transformative in the text than a relatively privileged, educated woman coming to accept her own biased attitudes towards herself and others. A shell of a book, that despite the apparent candor made me feel that it was a bit hollow.

Emilie starts in the middle of her life, with life's vital points shocking her into facing her feelings about her parents, her partner, her work and her lack of children. This isn't a memoir, but a way to confront her emotional state at various points in her life.
It's honest and probably quite cathartic as Emilie confronts her acceptance of situations one minute, whilst acknowledging that it should not be acceptable. From the state of hospitals, to rape, from unequal treatment of men and women to motherly love, Emilie examines her interaction with all she comes across and her state of mind.
It does make you question your own feelings, although I have to give thanks that I have not experienced the lows that Emilie has come across in her lifetime.
Very honest and well written, but as Emilie acknowledges, not entirely empathetic.

Notes to Self: Essays by Emilie Pine was one of those books I wasn't sure I'd like, but ended up enjoying very much. The author has written a number of personal essays on topics such as growing up with her alcoholic father, fertility, and her teenage years. They're all incredibly insightful and heartfelt. She is a university lecturer and some of her writing about working within academia resonated clearly with me. It's a book I'll be recommending to colleagues, definitely.

This is an extraordinary book. I hesitate to call it a book because it is really a collection of unconnected essays which add up to a picture of someone’s life. Emilie Pine writes most powerfully about her father and his battles with alcoholism, about her own struggles with fertility and about her teenage years. She also provides one of the most insightful accounts ever of what it means to be a female academic today.

She is a detached observer, providing the most intimate details laconically and then worrying that they might not give the full picture. However, what comes across is what it feels like to be in that place. That’s a triumph.

I don’t know if women and men will read it differently. I finished it thinking that my teenage daughter ought to read it just to understand a bit more about how the world operates but maybe that’s just a kind of fatherly guilt. Maybe because I have daughters, the section on growing up, the pitfalls of life and, especially, the loneliness of adolescence really moved me. The book is also quite funny in a black sort of way with humour in unexpected situations.

I liked the sense throughout the book that men are not the enemy, just victims of the same system acting out their roles in different ways. I liked the way that Emilie slowly comes to find agency in all of these ghastly situations she describes even sorting out a way of coming to terms with her own body or rather her sense of it.

Although some people might find the book rather grim (slow deaths and quite a lot of blood) she does work through to solutions and accommodations even if they’re not always easy to find. Her style makes for an easy read but don’t be fooled – there are hidden depths to be negotiated.

I'd never heard of Emilie Pine before I read this. I applied for it because it looked like the sort of thing I'd like. How right I was, although like is too tame a word for what this book of essays made me feel. Emilie's words resonated with me so strongly I read this book in two sittings, gulping down the words. I don't even really know where to start with how it made me feel. As a woman who has had multiple miscarriages and invasive gynae procedures, much of what she wrote about her body resonated with me, (although I am not childless). Her essay on writing her 'blood' was amazing, breathtaking, so familiar. I think we must be of a similar age and a lot of her experiences cross my own so that sometimes I cried in recognition or sadness for something she put so eloquently that I did not have the words for. Brutal and beautiful.

A collection of autobiographical essays about subjects such as infertility, miscarriage, being the child of an alcoholic.

I think this book has been entirely mis-sold.
I will say, the writing is beautiful. It's personable and packed full of emotion, even when you know next to nothing about the writer themselves. Essay collections are usually based around the thoughts of an individual and yet you can see how altruistic and interesting Pine truly is. The first essay about her father, who spent time slowly dying in a Greek hospital, makes you feel as though you're watching a miniseries, something innovative and different.
However, this collection is promoted as something discussing the position of the woman, the plight of the modern woman, yet it feels more like a collection of thoughts. As the title suggests, this is a group of notes that Pine puts together that float around her brain.
An interesting collection of personal essays that just didn't quite hit the mark for me, but one that fans of Sally Rooney will adore.

Well written. Raw. But just not an entertaining read for me. I'm not sure if it even aims to be entertaining.
I really feel for the author. She has obviously been dealt a tough hand in life and even though it was a really honest and raw read, I just found it a bit depressing in the end. I think it would have been better to mix up the sadder stories with happier anecdotes. At times, it comes across like she has had nothing good happening to her, and I'm sure that's not the case. I also think it would have been more effective to arrange the essays by chronology which would make it all flow a bit better.