Such a promising read!
Of course I was intrigued by the title and let's take a second to appreciate how beautiful the cover illustration is.
I never thought I would enjoy reading a hybrid writing style this much. This book portrayed the underlying message along with all the emotions the author had to offer, in a richer way. Looking forward to read more from this author.

Persephone's Children feels like a peek inside a diary. It's the narrative of one women's struggle with marginalisation, racism, domestic abuse and living a life. It offers expression and wisdom on things that can seem too much to bear and ultimately creatively documents the winding journey through and aftermath of leaving an abusive spouse.

In the 'About the Author' section, Rowan McCandless is described as "a tangential thinker, innovative forms fit the way she catalogues and understands the world, and she is proud to be a creative outlier". To me, this summarises what happens within Persephone's Children.

I found myself transported through Rowan's world (including her background and experiences) in a form that almost resembles poetry. The beautiful language transposed against the pain and the injustice and the courage within was an emotional joy to behold.

I come away with a hurting heart - though there is hope so wonderfully demonstrated as well. I feel challenged, encouraged and (perhaps bizarrely considering the differences in our life experience) restored.

It gets four stars, simply because it took an effort to get into; primarily because of the unique style and presentation of Persephone's Children rather than the content.

Rowan McCandless's Persephone's Children just blew me away. Though it's different in the way it frames its narrative, McCandless's book reminds me of In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado - easily one of the best books I've read in a while. Similar to Machdo, McCandless tells a moving story in a creative and memorable way.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with this eARC.

OH MY GOODNESS. This is a 5 star book. I can say with great confidence that I have never, ever read a book like this before. McCandless' creativity and imagination were on full display with this work - she pushed the creative nonfiction genre lightyears ahead with this work and I can't wait to read more of her work in the future. This book...goodness me. It chewed me up and left me in tears at the end. I'm truly in awe.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Through Persephone’s Children, Rowan McCandless has created a unique and beautifully crafted memoir that will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading. McCandless employs a variety of techniques throughout her essays to navigate through her experiences and articulate her journey through heartbreak, abuse, oppression, and trauma. We are introduced to McCandless’ world in her first essay, an alphabetic acrostic. She goes on to use the format of a contract to indicate how her husband controlled her, the rules that he imposed on her, and the abuse that she suffered. Other literary devices include crossword clues, writing prompts to explore varying aspects of her life, construction reports, and an inventory. My personal favourites were a quiz entitled “Hunger Games”, which allowed her to describe her struggle with an eating disorder and how the ways in which her family’s shaping of her identity contributed to this, and a short involving interactions with a director and scriptwriter as she and her husband took their respective parts in the script written for them to relay their relationship. Noteworthy in the latter is the blame placed on McCandless for the failings of the relationship, indicating her thoughts and feelings about her role as a victim of abuse. I also thought it was interesting how she identified with Persephone, a mythological character who has “a dual identity as queen of the underworld and as Kore the maiden and goddess of fertility. [McCandless] wondered how Persephone felt having to perpetually straddle two worlds through no fault of her own”. Born to a white mother and Black father, McCandless’ biracial roots and dual identity are woven through her essays.

Ultimately, McCandless uses these methods of storytelling to enable herself to work through the trials of her journey to this point, but it makes for incredibly remarkable reading and a unique insight into the mind of a woman that has suffered from abuse, burden, loss, and a search for identity for a large part of her life. What never fails to come through this all is the love she has for her daughters, which is testament to the strength and resilience of her character.

This is a beautiful book - lots of lists and thoughts and metaphors. Trees and houses and moving forwards . It felt like the privilege of being inside the jumbled thoughts of an abused woman living in a nightmare into moving on into list making and sorting and surviving..
The kind of writing that stays with you.

*ARC provided by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

Persephone’s Children is a memoir unlike any other. It is told through many different essays, in many different forms, including (but not limited to) an alphabetized list, a field study, multiple choice Q&A, religious and cultural rituals, text message exchanges, a glossary of terms, as well as regular essays.

The main subject of the memoir is McCandless’s most recent abusive marriage, and how she got help to leave. The author also discusses the domestic abuse from her first marriage, childhood sexual assault, her eating disorder and how it relates to her racial identity as a mixed Black person with intergenerational trauma, and her relationship with her parents and other family members that may have led her to “lose her voice”. She discusses how therapy, her daughters, and ultimately writing and its surrounding community helped her find her voice again.