Beautiful, moving and very funny. As with all of Jamison's work, it's insightful and carefully rendered, and despite some of the darker subject matter with the ex never felt too heavy.

Leslie Jamison is one of my very favorite contemporary authors and her latest does not disappoint. I especially love this book for its documentation and exploration of motherhood and single motherhood. Jamison’s writing is always luminous and it is bittersweet to finish a work by her.

might as well bring all my yearning ❤️ thank heavens the inimitable, brilliant Leslie Jamison brings hers!

I wanted to love this book but I felt like it was too overly literary and lacked a clear timeline so ultimately it just wasn't for me.

I Sleep in a Racing Car: Books on Divorce (or Marriage— Same Thing)

If you weren’t lucky enough to get divorced in 2023, you can always read about it.

Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrot, a jazz-age divorce-lady novel first published anonymously; Milton’s tracts on divorce where he warns that marital incompatibility could lead both parties to “grind in the mill of an undelighted and servil copulation” (go off); Susan Taubes’ Divorcing, with its psychoanalysis, severed heads and Susan Sontag affiliations; Hard-to-Do by Kelli Maria Korducki, the history of breakups through a Marxist lens, read when I got married and started thinking about Marxism (fidelity to only one of these projects won out); Other Men’s Daughters by Richard Stern (Philip Roth intros it). Leslie Jamison also has a new memoir out about her divorce, and it’s probably great because no one makes a bigger show of their problems than the literary bourgeoisie. Someone I know said they hate-listened to Fates and Furies with their mother on a road trip (I trust their taste).

While divorce only plays a part in this miniature six-decade-spanning social history, The Years, Annie Ernaux finds time to write that, after her divorce, she picked up “the thread of her adolescence where she’d left it off, returning to the same kind of expectancy, the same breathless way of running to appointments in high heels, and sensitivity to love songs.” Cut to Kirk Van Houten asleep in his racing car. (The only time I ever partook in online gambling I won $175.00 on Ernaux’s Nobel win.)

My Life as Man, originally excerpted in periodical called, I kid you not, Marriage & Divorce. Other people might have more divorces under their belt (Mickey Rooney takes the cake with seven), but Roth’s endless preoccupation with score-settling—his throne was atop a geyser of outrage—makes him perhaps the most divorced man in literature. “Marriages end,” Mary Kay Wilmers said, “but divorces never do.” Never was that truer than it was for Roth. (You can Google what he’s alleged to have said after learning of his first ex-wife’s fatal car accident.)

Lastly, Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages, a study of the marriages of various men and women of letters and one of the best books ever. If marriage is a tale spun by two, divorce is the two co-authors knowing to wrap things up before the story—and its players—go the way of loose, baggy Jamesian monsters. The couple that comes out looking the best, and that Rose most cherishes, is the one that never legally wed at all. Go figure.

P.S. Should you ever write a thinly fictionalized book about your divorce, be prepared for your very own former spouse to review it.

Rich, stylistic prose. This felt much more inward looking and somewhat repetitive compared to her other works, so I enjoyed it slightly less. Still, it's a pleasure to watch her mind grapple with ideas of freedom, commitment, desirability and the mundaneness of parenting. She makes even the mundane sublime.

Splinters is an interior memoir largely about early motherhood and how it affected the author's life, relationships, and writing career. Jamison does a masterful job of describing the wide emotional spectrum of early motherhood. It's all-consuming, glorious, tedious, and exhausting. As a mother, when your baby is born, your life automatically shifts quite dramatically. It can initially be quite hard to navigate and accept and it changes your relationship to your spouse irrevocably, which can be a negative or a positive thing. The birth of her daughter causes huge rifts in her marriage, and subsequently, they are in the midst of divorce proceedings when their baby is only about a year old.

The writing is descriptive and poetic, but sometimes a little repetitive. It's an incredibly interior and honest memoir, which made it a little dense to read. It kind of reminds me of the writing from a creative writing graduate course. She touches on the many conflicting thoughts she has about her daughter, her new role as mother, and navigating work and travel. How do you navigate being a good mother and maintain your career, especially while you don't have a partner to learn on? How much of our own history and baggage do we bring into parenthood? I listened to the audiobook, which is well-narrated by the author. Overall, a thoughtful memoir about early motherhood while continuing to pursue creative endeavors.

Thank you Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

Gorgeous, lush, moving and deeply personal. Leslie Jamison turns the pain of divorce into an exquisite jewel, a celebration of the joy of creating a new life and motherhood. I loved it.

Splinters documents those days after birth and beyond when you are consumed with caring for a new baby. I related to this so much, especially with the fixation on nursing, as well as relying on my mom as a caregiver for me! My mom, like Leslie’s was such a support. The memoir also documents the demise of her relatively new marriage to another novelist. I enjoyed the writing as it was beautiful. However, I felt like I have read this type of story before (or lived it) so it did not feel fresh or new to me. I am sure others will love it more. I wish I had read it in my 20s pre-kids.

In the aftermath of her divorce, Leslie Jamison begins rebuilding her life with her baby daughter. She examines her grief while celebrating a new life, recognizes the extraordinary within the mundane, and explores the complexities and facets of womanhood.

With The Empathy Exams, Jamison proved herself to be one of the greatest nonfiction authors writing today. Now in her first memoir, Jamison examines her own story with unflinching honesty and depth. She portrays herself as a flawed main character whose mistakes and poor choices make her relatable. She never avoids the topics that leave her vulnerable. I felt like it went on a little longer than it needed to, but I was never bored. Jamison fans and anyone who enjoys motherhood memoirs will love this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A thorough and honest excavation of the ending of a marriage and the follow through of building yourself back up after seeing your way through it.
Her writing is absolutely impeccable. I want to pick up a physical copy and highlight quite a bit.
This is my first experience with Leslie Jamison and I intend to follow her work and look back on her previous work as well.

I thought this sounded interesting and have heard a lot of praise for the author but this one wasn’t for me. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the free ebook.

This is another excellent book from Leslie Jamison. It feels very real and honest about her experiences as a new mother and through the early days of her separation and divorce, and the style is both literary and accessible.

The minute I start reading Leslie Jamison's Splinters, right away my reaction is WOW! the language is so good. This is someone who is really a master of craft, you just tumble into her story because you're seduced by her metaphors, by her seeming/presumed honesty. All good literature should make you feel something. A visceral experience. In reading Jamison's new book, all the way through I just kept thinking: she is such an excellent writer." The language! the language seduces you into the story. Here you are clearly in the hands of someone who knows about language. You know as a reader that you are going to be well taken care of.
I adore Leslie Jamison's work, I think her essays are some of the greatest essays written in the 21st century, Splinters is no exception. The more I think about it, the more I think it is a masterpiece. It's quite an unusual story where nothing happens but everything happens. I highly recommend it as it is doing something different with language and storytelling and provides readers who are writers with a freedom of their own to bend the rules and make something new.

I really love Leslie Jamison’s writing and have enjoyed every single one of her books, but Splinters is my favorite. It’s a memoir about divorce and motherhood and writing and friendship and love. Some lines I loved:

"In many photos from my childhood, my mother is embracing me—one arm wrapped around my stomach, the other pointing at something, saying, Look at that. To talk about her love for me would feel tautological; she has always defined my notion of what love is."

"Just like it’s meaningless to say our ordinary days meant everything to me, because they created me. I don’t know any self that exists apart from them."

Incredible and insightful memoir. Will definitely recommend. Beautiful comments on motherhood. Heart wrenching account of divorce.

maybe *the* memoir of the year? read this on my ipad but ended up buying a hardcopy. jamison's voice is startlingly honest and vulnerable.

Splinters is a memoir that skillfully portrays Leslie Jamison’s life as a mother, wife (and then not a wife), professional, person in recovery, and most meaningfully a person seeking connection and trying to navigate the pieces of a life that together make a whole.

The memoir is written in short vignettes that draw on Jamison’s surroundings and experiences and that she uses to demonstrate learnings, insights into oneself and life, and sometimes even god. At times the construction of this book seems like diary entries; they stand alone but the disparate pieces put together make a whole picture. I love how this structure feeds into the “splinters” theme of little fragments that can be chipped away or pieced together to make something whole.

It is difficult to review a memoir because it seems unfair to judge someone’s experience. What I can share is that I found so much to relate to while reading this. Even though our lives are very different, Jamison shared experiences that may be universal to mothers and some that may not be universal to all but that I personally share with her. I could not have been so public about my own experience but I’m so grateful Jamison did so I can see myself in her story and feel that connection.

There were times I struggled with the structure. This says more about me as a reader than it does the book. I prefer longform fiction and shy away from short stories; I most appreciate the places where Jamison lingers longer and at times felt things were cut short. I appreciate the metaphors and conclusions she draws from her experience but at times it is a bit heavy on the revelations and morals. Jamison’s observations are smart and meaningful but I lean toward liking the detailed descriptions of everyday life that memoirs offer more than the observations and conclusions drawn from these experiences. This is the perfect kind of book to dip in and out of and have on the go and for someone (like a new parent) who can only read in small stretches. Definitely worth the read if you enjoy memoirs!

Thank you @littlebrown and @netgalley for the #gifted eARC)

Leslie Jamison has a unique talent for spinning a narrative out of her life, finding threads and pockets to explore in events that might seem mundane or random in less capable hands. In this book, she explores the experiences of becoming a mother, getting divorced, and parenting through working, dating, and a pandemic, and while there's a compelling engine at its core, I wound up feeling a bit empty at the end. There's a moment when one of Leslie's friends tells her it feels like she's always going through some major life event, and by the end, it's easy to see why this could be a tiring energy to be around.

A memoir of divorce, single motherhood and how to compose a new story after the one you originally crafted isn’t the one that comes true. The memoir begins with Jamison entering her temporary rental with her 18 month old daughter after leaving her home she had with her husband. She had been her husband, C’s (she never reveals his name) second wife, his first wife had died of cancer and left him with a very young daughter when she met him. Jamison explores her parents’ troubled marriage as well as her relationships with her parents, her ex and her new boyfriends.

I found the writing of this memoir to be absolutely beautiful and I know that memoirs speak to different people; but this one unfortunately didn’t speak to me. Much of the book was spent on navigating motherhood of a newborn through toddlerhood, but there wasn’t anything new about her motherhood journey and therefore it wasn’t that interesting to read; it felt like looking at a pile of someone’s baby pictures where they think they’re amazing but you just have to smile. So while I think she’s an amazing writer, this just wasn’t the story of hers I wanted to read.

3.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for the ARC to review