My GoodReads Review:
I should start out by saying that I've been a fan of Molly Wizenberg's work for years and was delighted to be given an opportunity to review her new memoir — The Fixed Stars —as an e-galley. Molly's an adept, smart writer who has been brave to chronicle some difficult transitions in her life while she's still in the midst of them. While her previous memoir, Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage chronicled the strains that opening a restaurant put on her marriage to her (now ex-)husband Brandon, this memoir follows the disintegration of her marriage as she explores a broader, less defined sexuality as she dates a woman and then an non-binary individual named Ash, who (outside of the context of the book) she eventually marries. She also touches upon the implications of this transition as a mother to her young daughter, June.

There's a lot of beauty in this memoir, but as other reviewers have pointed out, I wonder if allowing more time to pass before publishing the book would have given her a less myopic perspective of the events that occurred. The writing is fresh, but sometimes feels as if she is still processing her identity change, and at points, defending it. It's clear she's hard on herself regarding how her choices have affected the life of Brandon, who she separated (from her perspective) amicably from, June, and how her friends and family judge her. At several points, she notes how she has had panic attacks and developed hives over her feelings of guilt for leaving her marriage. From my perspective, it's almost like she wanted a book to hand over to observers and say "Look, I did this for a well-thought-out reason" when, in all fairness, most people probably don't care all that much, given that she seems happy with her choices.

Nonetheless, it's a good read and would make a discussion-ready book club pick for those looking for diverse perspectives. It would make a good pairing with Glennon Doyle's Untamed.

As an added suggestion, check out Molly and Ash's cute ad for Nordstrom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFWgT...

Thanks to Abrams Press and Netgalley for the advanced reader's copy. The expected publication date is August 4, 2020 in the US.

The Fixed Stars is about a woman struggling with her identity and sexual orientation. She is married and has a child but realizes something in her has changed. I found it hard to connect with the writing, and it was a little boring at times. I felt there were some unnecessary details about her marriage and the restaurant so I did skim towards the middle to the end of it. I probably am not the target audience for this book. 2.5 rating overall.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advanced copy!

I have read and thoroughly enjoyed Molly Wizenberg's two other memoirs (A Homemade Life and Delancey) - this is the first one that is not focused on food, but on another kind of hunger. And personally I think it's the best of the three.

I followed Molly's blog Orangette for years; I remember sneaking peeks at it on illicit "internet breaks" in a boring bank job I had in 2004! Her writing has always been intimate and inviting, but The Fixed Stars takes her writing to another level that is more personal and revealing than anything that's come before it, and demonstrates what an interesting evolution she has had, in life and in her writing.

The premise of The Fixed Stars is a very interesting one - Molly, mother to a young child in her mid-30s and married for nearly a decade to a man, finds herself suddenly attracted to women, one in particular while serving on a jury. Like many heterosexual people, Molly had never questioned her sexual orientation before. She saw it as a stable, fixed part of her identity. Or certainly that she was "straight enough to not think about whether I was straight", as she puts it. To discover that her sexuality was more fluid than she realised was a huge shock, to her and her husband, and to their credit, they still obviously loved each other and do their best to accommodate this revelation by experimenting with an open marriage. It doesn't quite resolve things, as Molly has found herself profoundly and permanently altered and very ready to change the course of her life.

I found The Fixed Stars a fascinating read and a timely reminder that we never truly know what is going on behind the picture people present of their lives to the world. Molly's marriage to her husband Brandon always seemed like something out of a Nora Ephron film - they met through her blog, bonded through their love of food, and opened two restaurants together in Seattle. It always appeared quite idyllic and dynamic, from the outside looking in.

But as we begin The Fixed Stars journey, we sense that while Molly believes she is very satisfied with her life with Brandon (at this point, they now have a young daughter as well as their two restaurants), the truth is that she never wanted a life of being a restauranteur, nor being a restauranteur's wife. In Delancey she touches on this and comes to a happy conclusion that that's what marriage is about, letting the other person be who they are. But reading The Fixed Stars, you realise that Molly has compromised a great deal for Brandon to pursue his dreams. So while the revelation that starts the journey of The Fixed Stars comes out of the blue for Molly and her family, and she admitted on her blog when she shared the news "it's nothing I would have chosen", as a reader you can see that many aspects of Molly's life with Brandon were also things she wouldn't necessarily have chosen. She just wants to walk her daughter to school, write all day, cook and eat dinner together with her partner in the evenings, and go to bed at the same time - all simple things that are not really possible when your husband owns and runs two restaurants.

The Fixed Stars is a raw and intimate examination of the fact that life is not as logical or smooth as we would like it to be - and if something as foundational as our sexuality can alter over time, then who are we...really? Molly doesn't shy away from digging through her past, her psyche and the work of scholars - literary and scientific - to ponder this question.

Personally, I think the book would have been stronger without the regular quotations and references to outside sources (gender studies, scientific studies, literature, philosophy, etc) - I was far more interested in Molly's journey and the next step in her self-discovery. And of course with any memoir, particularly if you are young and the events you're relating are still recent, there is the inevitable tension between how much you're allowed (legally or otherwise) to reveal and how much you need to leave out or skip over. Molly doesn't hold back on herself but understandably has to when relating parts of the journey that involve other people. While I don't think it detracted from the powerful impact of the story, I can see other reviewers' points that this might have been a different, deeper book had it been written with another 10 years distance.

Nevertheless, it was a compelling and beautifully-written book that I could barely put down and devoured in a handful of sittings. The Fixed Stars is an eloquent reminder that nothing is certain and the life we have built for ourselves can change very quickly...and that is not always necessarily a bad thing. I look forward to reading whatever Molly Wizenberg writes next!

With thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.

This memoir about the author’s complete upheaval of her life when she develops a crush on a woman, although she’s married with a young child, was laid bare and thought-provoking.

Wizenberg spends the entirety of the book at war with herself for wanting what she wants and going after it, and the guilt she carries over the devastation she leaves in her wake. Not surprisingly, I felt much the same reading it. I loved her honesty about what she desired, knowing it was often at the expense of her family, but also found myself really disliking how selfish she was to blow up the family she had committed to.

On one hand - - aren’t people allowed to change, or discover things about themselves, and pursue a new path towards happiness? But on the other, how much should one person’s happiness get to infringe on everyone else’s well-being? Ugh. I don’t know. I’m glad the question wasn’t mine to figure out.

The dissolution of the author’s marriage was sad, even if ultimately for the best, and I kept feeling like I wanted to read more about how it unraveled. She would write that they fought, they argued, they were counseled. But I wanted more of what that looked like, more of what was said to feel like I really understood why it was so irreconcilable.

I was struck by the author’s account of having to keep a list of people she needed to “out” herself to and the resentment that went along with it. Why should she have been expected to reach out to inform those not directly affected about the state of her romantic life? At what point are people who identify as anything other than “straight” entitled to some privacy?

One thing that bothered me while reading was how often the author quoted authors. It felt very academic, like I had to take notes for an exam. Once in a while is okay. This was a lot. I get citing great thinkers to bolster your argument, but when it’s your story, your thinking should be enough, yeah? It’s your story - just quote yourself.

Thanks to #netgalley and #abramspress for this ARC of #thefixedstars in exchange for an honest opinion.

Thank you to the author, Abrams Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Once I started this book, I realized that I had just recently read the author's memoir of opening a restaurant with her husband ("Delancey"), which I really enjoyed. Interestingly, parts of this book overlap with the other memoir. I enjoy the author's writing style, and her musings on how she came to be who she is today, and the research she shared about gender and sexuality was informative and eye-opening. However, it felt as though this was a book that should have perhaps waited a few years. I feel that when you're in the middle of something and working through it, you don't have the birds-eye view you need to write a memoir. The people she's writing about are still in her life right now - how do you deal with writing honestly, when this may jeopardize relationships?

*I was kindly approved for an e-ARC of this book on NetGalley, but all opinions are my own*

This book was highly readable and beautifully written, however I didn't completely gel with it for one reason or another. A large focus of this book was on Molly's marriage to her husband, rather than discussions on her sexuality, but that's no fault of hers. This was my own preconception of this book. I would, however, still recommend it.

This is a beautifully honest memoir about Molly Wizenberg's discovering her sexual orientation later in life (in her mid-30s). She's married to a man when she meets another woman during jury duty and can't stop thinking about her. The memoir explores what happens next with her marriage, her child, and her future relationships.

I've been a big fan of Molly Wizenberg's for a long time. Ever since the beginning of her Orangette days. I've followed her story and have long loved catching up with her and Matthew on Spilled Milk. In November 2016, I was excited to see that she updated her blog and it was then I learned she and her husband were separated and Molly had discovered her sexual orientation had changed. I feel oddly proud of Molly for writing this memoir.

The book reads like a conversation with a friend. Molly brings you into her life during this time and vividly describes her confusion, desires, and sadness about the dissolution of her marriage. She answers a lot of questions that you probably want to ask people, but don't. In addition to sexuality, she talks a lot about motherhood and what her responsibility to her daughter is.

I do think the book was lacking just a little something. It almost felt as though, as open as Molly was being, she was still holding back a bit. And maybe it's just because I know how many awesome ventures Molly has going on in her life, but it bothered me a bit that she doesn't talk about any of them. I realize that's not what this memoir is about, but if you didn't know her, the book reads like she raises her daughter and works at her ex-husband's restaurants and doesn't give any details about the rich career she has built. She mentions Matthew several times, but never provides details about what they do together. Again, I know that's not the point of her memoir, but I wanted a more complete look at her as a person.

Overall, I'm so happy Molly wrote this memoir and I hope others also find value in her sharing her innermost thoughts.

I thought I was straight. Straight enough to not think about whether I was straight.

After an encounter with a woman she found intensely attractive, Molly and her husband, Brandon, move to an open marriage and ultimately an amicable divorce. I need to stress the ‘amicable’ – the way Molly tells it, the separation and the shared parenting of their young daughter was smooth – ‘Planning our end, we sometimes felt like a we.’

There’s a lot of philosophising in this memoir – about relationships, about identity, about certainty. The title of the book is drawn from Molly likening astronomers naming constellations to marriage –

The constellations we see are temporary human creations, our effort to draw order and meaning from a mostly unknowable universe… Marriage is like that too: a method we’ve devised to protect against the disorder of the outside world, to make sense of the wonderful nonsense that is love.

There are lots of honest reflections in this memoir, however, I did feel that in some parts, Molly relied on the quotes of others to describe her thoughts. While these quotes were all insightful and relevant, it gave the memoir an ‘essay’ feel that I think could have been avoided – Molly writes beautifully and I wanted to know exactly what she was feeling, rather than how others felt in similar situations.

Molly’s conclusions were refreshing – she finds a sense of peace in accepting that her change in sexual preference was something that ‘happened’, and not something that necessarily had to be fully understood or interrogated – some readers might find this light-weight, but it does take her considerable effort to get to this point, and it’s a concept that is applicable to anyone thinking about what is at our ‘core’.

What part of you is stable, if you’re actually changing all the time? You didn’t used to be a mother, or a wife, or a restaurant owner. Now you are… What if the one constant thing about you is that you’re changeable?

3.5/5

I received my copy of The Fixed Stars from the publisher, Abrams Press, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. I really loved this book. I’m still trying to sort out my feelings about it which is part of why I enjoyed it so much. Wizenberg tackles complex issues (sexuality, identity, marriage, parenting, mental health) with wisdom, maturity, and research. My thoughts were constantly churning as I read this. I also felt like she did not make the mistake others sometimes do with memoirs of using their story to preach their values. It was very much written in the tone of ‘this is my story. It’s not good or bad, it’s just me. This is what happened.’ I very much enjoyed sharing her journey.

Thank you NetGalley, author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It was an interesting book with a compelling story that was well written. At times I found the book a bit uncomfortable to read and there were details provided that were a bit too much for my comfort level.

Enjoyed her previous books immensely. This one, however, started out great then got extremely boring, Skimmed through to the end..

This was such an interesting memoir. I couldn't put it down. Molly Wizenberg's exploration of her own sexuality, as well as trying to figure out who you really, was so raw and understandable. I felt like I could feel everything she was feeling.

I struggled with this one. I was a fan of Molly's blog, Orangette, but have not read any of her previous memoirs. Like other reviewers, I think this could have been more effective as a long essay rather than a memoir. Additionally, her reliance on so many similes made it feel like the energy was missing from this book. Lots of similes that didn't quite add up. I really wanted to like this one, and it's clear she's done some research, but I finished the book feeling unsatisfied. Maybe because she's still living it?

This book explores the life of a husband and wife married with a child and what happens When a woman explores the potential of being gay, or bisexual. This book gave me strong Glendon Doyle untamed vibes. Well written and heartbreaking in the same aspect. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I read Orangette for years; Molly’s short but tender blog posts,photos shot on strange angles or with odd focus, simple home cooking recipes. It’s one of those things where you don’t know the writer, but you’ve read through a decade of blog archives and double-tapped a bunch of instagram posts and they feel like at least a friend of a friend. So reading this memoir felt a little strange, almost intrusive.

And honestly, not that great. I think it could have been better suited to a long article, or maybe just waiting five more years to write. Blog posts can be written in the midst of something but memoirs, not so much. It just feels a bit half-finished. Even the references throughout feel almost like she skimmed through the works used in The Argonauts.

And the people she writes about aren’t characters, they’re people who are still in her life right now. Which is obviously a difficulty of memoir, but it feels like she only wanted to write good and kind things about everyone, because they still have relationships that would be jeopardised by harsh words in a memoir. Maybe it’s time to try fiction; as much as it might be a lightly fictionalised version of her life, at least it would allow people to be complicated characters.

I feel bad giving this a bad review. I think Molly’s a good writer! I just don’t think this is a good book. Reread the Orangette archives instead!

I might have thought that I “knew” Molly Wizenberg from her earlier books (A Homemade Life and Delancey), her blog (Orangette) and her podcast (Spilled Milk) as she describes in The Fixed Stars: “I’m a straight, married for nearly a decade, with a house in the suburbs, a not-quite-three-year-old, a family dog, and two restaurants that I run with my husband.” But, a stint at jury duty in 2015 is about to change that.
In The Fixed Stars, Ms. Wizenberg opens up her world, life, and journey exploring her gender, sometimes in a very graphic way. It’s not just her story that she tells - she supplements it with research and readings by others, both scientific and literary. The writing style wasn’t as tight as her previous memoirs, but perhaps that’s a reflection of the upheaval in her life.
The book delves into her changing definition of family as well, and I loved her description: “Brandon and I have gone from being two people in love - one version of “family” - to two divorced people with a child in common. This is family too: people bound together by history, even if they don’t always like each other. How bleak and how great.”
The Fixed Stars was a compelling and informative book, and I moved past the absence of recipes to appreciate Ms. Wizenberg’s strength in putting her story out so publicly. I look forward to reading more about her journey.
Thanks to Netgalley and Abrams Books for the opportunity to read The Fixed Stars in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars rounded to 5 stars

I rarely read memoirs, but this one called to me. The Fixed Stars is a very frank and absorbing account of Ms. Wizenberg’s painful yet steadfast journey to find herself at the age of 37.

After ten years of marriage to her best friend and father (Brandon) of her only child (June), Molly is awakened by a very unexpected draw towards a lesbian attorney while serving jury duty. Over the next year, Molly and Brandon try valiantly to make things work within new parameters. Unfortunately for Brandon, he is at a disadvantage as Molly, for the most part, has put aside her dreams in order to help Brandon achieve his and is more than ready to change course.

I was really impressed with Molly. She puts her heart and soul, sweat and tears into discovering who she is, what her goals are and how to achieve them. She takes Brandon to therapy and tries everything in her power to see if they can do this together and makes sure Brandon is as okay as possible throughout her trek to explore her own needs. I especially liked how she made sure her small daughter understands the basics of what is happening and remains an essentially well-adjusted kid.

Molly is willing to open herself up to many people during her journey and just lays it all out there. How many of us can do that? She deeply researched her issues and includes many excellent references in a bibliography at the back of the book.

Molly’s story is intimate, brave and inspiring. She is also an author by trade, and her writing style is excellent. Though it is nonfiction, it reads easily as if it were a novel. And for other avid readers similar to me who like to be educated while reading for pleasure, there is opportunity to learn much about gender fluidity.

I highly recommend this memoir to all interested in reading about a fascinating journey in self-discovery and also those who want to learn more about gender identity.

Beautiful job, Ms. Wizenberg!

I’d like to thank Net Galley, Abrams Press, and Ms. Molly Wizenberg for an ARC of this book. Opinions are mine alone and are not biased in any way.

This book is beautiful and I think it will be both wildly popular and important to contemporary conversations. I am a longtime fan of Molly's and this is her most ambitious and sophisticated work, a book that will stay on my shelf for the duration.

This book was soooooo good! 5 stars! Wizenberg does an amazing job of walking the reader through all the turmoil she feels while exploring her sexuality as a mid-life adult. This book discusses a topic that isn't often tread upon, that is--what happens when a woman who always considered herself straight, starts to have feelings for another woman. The author does an excellent job of exploring these gray areas.

Recommended for fans of the memoir genre or the author’s earlier work. The writing here is good and her story interesting but nothing mind blowing.