For seven years Mikey and I have been exploring a few pledges. We pledged to no longer make decisions based on money, to live from waste and from...
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Erin M, May 16, 2013 (view all comments by Erin M)
This book begins on a horrific note - a stillborn child - and from that point on, you are wrapped up in Lidia Yuknavitch, in all of her talent and beauty and selfishness and anger and brains. I finished this book and never wanted to return it to the library, and then I wanted to return it that second so that someone else could read it. I wasn't always comfortable; she is unflinchingly honest, and apparently not concerned with whether or not her readers like her. Sometimes I didn't. But I felt like I knew her. I appreciated that this wasn't trite or workshoppy - it so easily could have been, but there is a sincerity and a hardness in here that saved it.
I don't really like books that tell me everything is going to be okay. Usually they feel very sterile, and more often than not, as if everything is only going to be okay if you follow very precise and preachy rules. But here is a woman who is damaged and angry and makes very bad choices, but is also smart and passionate and full of love, and she says that if you are damaged and angry and making bad choices yourself, it might help to "make up stories until you find one you can live with." And I believe her.
I didn't always like this book, but I won't be surprised if, five years down the road, I find that it has become very important to me.
cookie e, January 31, 2013 (view all comments by cookie e)
I could read this book over and over again. Lydia Yuknavitch's writing style is so lyrical, so beautiful, and immensely powerful. She has taken the art of writing to another level. She could write about the price of beans in China and make it a wonderful read. This is not to say that the content of The Chronology of Water is not compelling, because it most certainly is. She was able to put into words feelings and emotions that were so deeply buried within my own soul that it was almost frightening. For me, Lydia's story finally gives a voice to those part of womanhood that we don't often talk about -- but should.
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JenniJai, January 30, 2013 (view all comments by JenniJai)
Just fascinating and scary for me as I read the author's honest story. Scary because I identified with her and fascinating because she spins her personal intelligent hold on life.
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john.obrien, January 30, 2013 (view all comments by john.obrien)
I was looking for a book to read over the holidays and found this book that blew me away. The author went to UO and studied under Ken Kesey and it shows with her creative style. I could not put the book down. As it rained outside, the Chronology of Water carried me into Lydia's story and around Oregon, California, Florida, and Texas.
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rachelfiske, January 30, 2013 (view all comments by rachelfiske)
nearly a year out from the first time i read this book, it remains, somehow, in my body--it is integral and irrevocably integrated. instead of asking for permission, this book doles it out in spades--to the freaks and the feminists, the broken-bodied and the nearly-crushed souls. when i say this book is important, i don't mean in the scope of 2012. heck, i don't even mean in the scope of the 21st century. this book is important in the scope of everything written and everything yet to come.
Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir, The Chronology of Water, is fierce and voluptuous. Intimate and expansive. Hard, hard stuff presented in gorgeous language. I picked it up on impulse, read the first line, and was crying before I reached the end of the opening segment. There's heartbreak in here, yes. There's rage and triumph. But what really brings tears to my eyes when I read is beauty.
by Gigi Little
"Staff Pick"
by Linda C.,
The Chronology of Water was not what I was expecting or hoping for. It was more beautiful, poetic, and painful than anything I've read in a long time. I picked it up looking for debauchery and depravity; I found breathlessness.
by Linda C.
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"The floodgates of Yuknavitch's (Real to Reel) powerful memoir burst open with the birth of her stillborn daughter and from there the events of her life 'swim in and out between each other, ithout chronology.' Yuknavitch is a former competitive swimmer and she repeatedly returns to the image of life's fragments being swept along, as if by a current. After a childhood spent fearing her abusive father and furious at her alcoholic mother for failing to protect her and her older sister, Yuknavitch received a swimming scholarship to Texas Tech, which she loses after her second year when she became addicted to alcohol and drugs. Married briefly to an artist, she ends up at the University of Oregon, part of a fiction workshop taught by Ken Kesey, her writing fueled by the recent loss of her daughter. It takes another failed marriage before she realizes that mutual respect between a man and a woman is possible. This isn't a memoir 'about' addiction, abuse, or love: it's a triumphantly unrelenting look at a life buoyed by the power of the written word. (Apr.)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
"Review A Day"
by Megan Zabel, Powells.com,
"I'm not sure I've ever had such a powerful, complex reaction to a book. The Chronology of Water is astonishingly beautiful, and, as a writer, Yuknavitch is a force. Her writing hits you, hard. It rocks you. She knocked me over with passages so brilliant, so true, I had to reread them over and over until I could bear to let them go in order to move on to the next paragraph." (Read the entire Powells.com review)
"Review A Day"
by Debra Gwartney, The Oregonian,
"It didn't surprise me that as soon as I finished Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir, The Chronology of Water, I broke out in a fever. Maybe lingering late-season germs were to blame, but I'm also convinced that this bold and highly unconventional book — hot, gritty, unrelenting in its push to dismantle the self and then, somehow, put the self back together again — gets not just under a reader's skin but seeps all the way into her bloodstream." (Read the entire Oregonian review)
"Review"
by Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Origin: A Novel,
"Flooded with light and incandescent beauty, Lidia Yuknavitch's The Chronology of Water cuts through the heart of the reader. These fierce life stories gleam, fiery images passing just beneath the surface of the pages. You will feel rage, fear, release, and joy, and you will not be able to stop reading this deeply brave and human voice."
"Review"
by Rebecca Brown, author of The Gifts of the Body,
"I love this book and I am thankful that Lidia Yuknavitch has written it for me and for everyone else who has ever had to sometimes kind of work at staying alive. It's about the body, brain, and soul of a woman who has managed to scratch up through the slime and concrete and crap of life in order to resurrect herself. The kind of book Janis Joplin might have written if she had made it through the fire — raw, tough, pure, more full of love than you thought possible and sometimes even hilarious. This is the book Lidia Yuknavitch was put on the planet to write for us."
"Review"
by Andrei Codrescu, author of The Poetry Lesson,
"This intensely powerful memoir touches depths yet unheard of in contemporary writing. I read it at one sitting and wondered for days after about love, time, and truth. Can't get me any more excited than this."
"Review"
by Kerry Cohen, author of Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity,
"From the moment I picked up The Chronology of Water, I couldn't put it down, and I thought about it long after I'd finished. Rarely do you find talent like Lidia Yuknavitch's. Reading this book is like diving into Yuknavitch's most secret places, where, really, we all want memoir to take us, but it so rarely does. The reader emerges wiser, enlightened, and changed."
"Review"
by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Pygmy,
"I've read Ms. Yuknavitch's book The Chronology of Water, cover to cover, a dozen times. I am still reading it. And I will, most likely, return to it for inspiration and ideas, and out of sheer admiration, for the rest of my life. The book is extraordinary."
"Review"
by David Shields, author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto,
"The Chronology of Water's central metaphor works beautifully: we all keep our heads above water, look around, and enjoy our corporeal life despite all the reasons not to; beyond that, the book is immensely impressive to me on a human level: the narrator/speaker/protagonist/author emerges from a seriously hellish childhood and spooky adolescence into a middle age not of bliss, certainly, but of convincing engagement and satisfaction."
"Review"
by Cheryl Strayed, author of Torch,
"Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir The Chronology of Water is a brutal beauty bomb and a true love song. Rich with story, alive with emotion, both merciful and utterly merciless, I am forever altered by every stunning page. This is the book I'm going to press into everyone's hands for years to come. This is the book I've been waiting to read all of my life."
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