4.5 rounded down

When I heard Rebecca Solnit was publishing a memoir this year it quickly became one of my most anticipated releases of 2020 - having enjoyed a number of her previous collections (including Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Faraway Nearby and Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises to name but a few) Solnit is one of my favourite living essayists.

And this is a very "Solnit" memoir. Rather than being a straight retelling of the formative events of her life thus far the reader learns about the author and how she has become the writer she is today through snippets of her past which are seamlessly weaved into writing in a style typical of her essays. A key theme is (duh) her identity, and how gender is inextricably linked to that - and how her experience of gender through her life as a white American woman in the 20th and 21st centuries has contributed to the writer she has become today. I found myself relating closely to a lot of what she said and ended up highlighting long sections of writing. There've been times in the past where I've felt that even though the topics she has chosen to write about are quite zeitgeist-y and the essays are published still in that moment that they already feel a bit passé, but I have to say I never felt that here.

Highly recommended to everyone, but I think those who are already fans of Solnit will enjoy this even more.

I received an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review

Because I am humanly self-centered, this book made me think about my youth in Aughties Brooklyn and how I thought I knew everything but really didn't know everything. What i really did not know was how much of my life was trying to survive my experience as a young woman, and that this state of being was temporary, and how quickly this time would end, and I would become another thing, a no-longer young woman, a mother, a career woman, a wife, an NPR listener, and how I would miss the un-understanding of my struggle, without every wanting to go back. This book provides a great way to revist that time and think through all the things I never thought through, without actually having to be in my 20s in the city ever again. And for that, 5 hearty stars. Mwah.