This is an unusual memoir retold in seventeen essays where the author recalls past relationships that for one reason or another did not work out. She delves into her family history looking for answers and throughout this memoir questions herself and her beliefs as she explores not only her own life choices but that of her ancestors. It is a journey of self discovery, where Hauser examines the many challenges that life has thrown at her, which have shaped her experiences and beliefs. There are many subjects covered in the essays, that the author cleverly manages to weave into her overarching theme of love and the pursuit of the perfect love story.
It is a very frank look at women perceive love and relationships and how they often sell themselves short in the pursuit of love. It is funny, sad and poignant but a reflective read, it may not be for everyone. I found it difficult at times as it deals with tough subjects like breast surgery, infidelity and fertility, but I was glad I persevered with it.

The Crane Wife - C.J. Hauser

Some years ago (looks like 2019) a friend shared the titular essay of this collection on her Facebook page. She said it was a beautiful piece of writing and curiosity led me to click through to read it on the Paris Review. I was really moved by it too, so much so that when this book was referenced on a podcast I listened to in May I thought “hmmmm…. That sounds familiar, could it be the same essay??” - a quick google later showed it was 😃

The Crane Wife is one of the best essays in the collection, really standing the test of time. But there are plenty of others to love too. I particularly enjoyed the exploration of the balance of romantic relationships based on the X-files inspired scale of Scully and Mulder (!) and accidentally inhabiting the extremes of app dating. I loved the sense of place the author can conjure and notions of home, family expectations, blended families, fertility and bodily autonomy are covered alongside romantic relationships with the same skill and nuance.

An excellent book, highly recommended 🌈

I read a review of this and promoted 'The Crane Wife' to the top of my TBR pile pretty quickly. CJ Hauser has an excellent compilation of essays here, ones that deal with different aspects of her life. The titular tale deals with a trip to observe the whooping crane, just after walking away from the man she was set to marry. Other pieces are about her home, the brilliantly-named 'Johnnycakes', in upstate New York, through to bisexual encounters, and finding the perfect 'lint ball' in her dryer - the tale is called 'Siberian Watermelons'.

Throughout, Hauser, who is a professor of creative writing at Colgate University in the US, enlightens readers with many intimate aspects of her life - many of which deal with her failed relationships. Early essays are incredibly short, like thumb-nail sketches; later ones are longer. At times, some tend to go on a little too long, perhaps like they are in the style of a stream of consciousness. However, this is necessary, I believe, and reinforces the writer's candid style.

For a reader who enjoys insights into a writer's life, 'The Crane Wife' is brilliant. I particularly like the categorisation at the end - and this is well-placed for re-reading. For sure, this is a thought-provoking and interesting collection.

Presented through essays, Hauser has spent years considering how life is 'supposed to be' and what that means for her. In her frank and humorous style, she delves into her life, considering her definitions and realisations of love and relationships. After officiating a wedding, visiting a fertility clinic, rereading Rebecca and studying The X Files, she furthers her ideas on what she should be looking for from life. If anything at all.

'She is meant to contain within her own self everything necessary to be happy.' 25%

Periodically, each essay delivers a profound phrase or concept. It takes a journey to reach it, but, as 'Siberian Watermelon' explores, that is the point.

'I tried to learn from all the years of mistakes that had come before, even as I was sure I was making new ones.' 98%

The language and structure create a broad and layered story in each essay, although the emotional connection can be inconsistent. However, this is true of all such collections; topics and contexts resonant differently for different people. As Hauser explores, it is impossible for all aspects of one person to align with all aspects of someone else. Although, the insight into another's mentality and experiences is sharp and compelling. As such, 'The Crane Wife' and 'The Second Mrs. de Winter' struck a chord with me more than the others.

It is also because of this that, upon completing the book, I felt there were only a few points to take away from it. Instead, after reading back on my highlights, I realised that I had internalised them so quickly, because they accurately reflected my experiences, that I hadn't needed time to process them. Whether this is good writing or the right writing at the right time, I could not say; either way, it was good and right.

'What were you told had to happen in a story for it to feel complete?' 95%

This is a delicately written and engaging memoir, told in a series of essays, dealing with love, friendship, and family. It gives you lots to think about and some good takeaways: know your worth - never settle for less than you deserve!
It’s intimate, funny, candid and likeable vulnerable.
That’s it! I really enjoyed it!
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.

Really enjoyed this book. The narrator tells the story of her love life often through a comparison with another story. There is a portion devoted to how her situation is and isn’t like the heroine’s in Philadelphia Story, which I liked, and not just because I realised that the film is a forerunner of High Society…

Ten days after calling off her wedding, the writer went on an expedition to study the whooping crane. The Crane Wife is a book for anyone whose life isn’t what they expected it to be.

This is a life story told in a series of essays. They are frank and honest. Sometimes funny, often not, but always interesting. I don’t think I have ever read a tale told this way but it certainly works well. In fact, it's a wonderfully written piece of art. Told in a down-to-earth fashion as the author bleeds her emotions onto the page. It does ramble a little, however, but quickly returns to the story. On the whole, a good read.

I’ll start this review the way everyone else likely has – by saying that in 2019 I read and reread CJ Hauser’s essay entitled ‘The Crane Wife’. Seeing that she had transformed the essay into a book, I feverishly tried to boost my NetGalley rating in the hopes of getting a copy to review. To my surprise, once I had my copy I found myself slogging through the book and struggling to write a review. I find that my feelings about it are indeterminate, much like the book itself.

The Crane Wife, Hauser’s memoir-qua-essay-collection of the same name, constructs a narrative of the author’s experiences and thoughts on love, relationships, and motherhood via reflections on the externalities of her life: films, family histories, public figures, and coincidental architecture (her sister lives in Shirley Jackson’s old house). Hauser is a compelling writer: an acute observer with an eye for the details that transform life into literature. At her best, she takes the mundane and makes it extraordinary, penning compelling essays with highly original insights. And she is at her best when she takes on the subject of family at a slant — her experiences with her grandparents’ ashes and her creation of a found family of friends, alongside her lost family of the daughters of her ex-boyfriends, show another way to populate your life, when the traditional route of marriage and family fail to materialise.

The title essay remains the standout, and reminded me what I originally found so exciting about Hauser’s work. I was especially moved to revisit it, having had my own experiences with the whooping cranes in south Texas since I first read her essay. Coming back to it now reminded me of my own growth since 2019, which I saw beautifully reflected back at me in the essay itself. Other strong essays are the ones in which Hauser interweaves her life with the media that shaped it — The Philadelphia Story, The X Files, Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. These essays are metatextual reflections on how the structures of relationships we witness form the relationships we enter, a reality Hauser’s book attempts to reflect in order to disrupt.

At times, however, the elements of Hauser’s writing that contribute to her success as an essayist translate poorly to a full-length memoir. Her tendency to elevate the everyday can sometimes come across as an attempt to give meaning to things that simply aren’t that meaningful; her essay on Shirley Jackson and her niece is a particularly strong example of that. Yes, it is strange that her sister lives in Jackson’s old house; however, the reflection on her own place in her sister’s family this fact sets up falls flat when Hauser reveals, after very little introduction, that the haunting presence of Jackson’s novels do not come to bear in this context; her niece loves her and her sister and brother-in-law welcome her. (Oh, okay.) The essay has no stakes; this stakelessness reoccurs often in The Crane Wife.

Moreover, Hauser favours punchy, short sentences which, again, are effective within the context of a single essay, but fall flat when repeated in many essays throughout an entire collection. Once they start to feel repetitive, they lose their impact entirely and become annoying. It’s this kind of aspect of the memoir that can make it veer into feeling like someone trying to make their life sound interesting, which is a shame, because I think Hauser’s life is interesting, and her insights important.

Ultimately, I would still class Hauser as a brilliant author and after reading The Crane Wife I am keen to read her fiction. However, The Crane Wife, to me, inadequately fulfils its purpose of constructing a memoir from disparate essays — it is best when it forgets to be a memoir; when it remembers, the keen observations that are Hauser’s gift have to be strong-armed into some overarching narrative of her life, often in ways that make the subject matter less compelling. I once read a review of Joan Didion’s work that complimented her lack of fear of the ‘I’ when delving into the outside world. Thinking in these terms, I would say that Hauser’s work suffers out of a need to reach for the ‘I’. My recommendation, then, would be to read it slowly, absorbing one essay and then putting it aside until you’re feeling more of the itch that Hauser is so good at scratching.

The book was quite difficult a hard read for me. It felt more autobiographical and somewhat disjointed. I liked the love and relationship theme but did not enjoy how it was presented.

I thought the label “memoir in essays” was a little misleading, some of the pieces collected here were presumably custom-made, and all are semi-autobiographical but a fair number, like the phenomenally-successful “The Crane Wife”, read as if they’re examples taken from C J Hauser’s greatest hits. And, although there’s a sense of the author’s background, family, childhood etc, it’s really quite a fragmented self-portrait. Instead, what stood out were recurrent themes revolving around the difficulties of negotiating a sense of self and attempting a successful, all-consuming relationship with another person. This broadens out into musings on the nature of romance and the sorts of cultural expectations about love and marriage Hauser found herself caught up in.

Hauser was keen to avoid referring to “women” in the marketing for her book, and it’s true enough that the kind of writing featured here can cut across gender divides – Alexander Chee’s articles for example. But even though Hauser vaguely refers to herself as queer/bi/pan my overwhelming impression was of being presented with the thoughts and experiences of a hetero woman grappling with her feelings about men, there’s just so much here about men, and men from a woman’s perspective. I think this is part of the reason I found these difficult to connect with at times. And identification is crucial for this kind of writing, an offshoot of the “intelligent” lifestyle feature commonly found in publications like <i>Vogue</i>, <i>The New York Times</i> or <i>The Guardian</i>, which largely depends on setting up moments of recognition for readers. And, like those too, these are intelligent but not too weighty, filled with cultural reference points from books and films: Dorothy in <i>The Wizard of Oz, </i> the dynamic between Scully and Mulder in <i>The X-Files</i> and what the <i>The Philadelphia Story</i> asserts about women’s choices when it comes to choosing a man. They’re recognisably part of a tradition that harks back to Nora Ephron and Meghan Daum to Eula Biss and beyond. Although they’re not as consistently witty as Ephron’s essays or as relentlessly incisive as the best of Biss.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy a number of the entries, I just rarely found myself fully engaged with them. Apart from the title piece which skilfully weaves together Japanese legend, whooping cranes and ducking out of her wedding, I appreciated Hauser’s reflections on Shirley Jackson; her slightly absurdist take on John Belushi and family graveyards; her thoughts on what du Maurier’s <i>Rebecca</i> might teach us about encounters with the ghosts of someone’s former loves; and her frank depiction of the literal horrors of online dating. There are some excellent passages, some pleasing dry humour, and some memorable lines, although the essay structure can start to seem a little formulaic after a while - unlike a conventional memoir that’s intended to be read as a continuous narrative, this would probably work best approached as a collection to dip in and out of.

I don’t read many memoirs but every time I do, I make a promise to read more of them! Told through a selection of essays this memoir is a really brilliant read and very easy to get through!

2.5/5 An interesting collection of essays detailling the authors experiences of love, friendship, family and life in general. I've come to really that essay collections are not a format I particularly enjoy though there were definitely some that I found relatable and intriguing. This is my first encounter with the author and I found her writing style didn't work well for me but I can see fans of her work loving this intimate look at her life to date.
Thanks to NetGalley.co.uk and Penguin Random House LLC for the free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I first encountered CJ Hauser when she was a guest on the Penguin podcast. I don’t often read memoirs so I have little to compare this to; I wonder whether it’s normal to be quite so soul-baring and candid. But what I can say is that it is captivating from the off. The writing is so good as to be unnoticeable most of the time, except when it hits you in the solar plexus with its home truths. Sometimes in the first person and sometimes in the second, it is always absorbing.
There’s no linear narrative I could discern, with subjects and episodes being introduced organically, but I didn’t find that off-putting. The range is wide. Hauser’s description of the events and conversations that led to her deciding not to marry her fiancé quite close to the day is unflinching, and instructive, too – if only we all had the wisdom to make such clear-sighted decisions or, even better, not get ourselves into those situations in the first place. And her dissection of the Philadelphia Story, from which my beloved High Society was adapted, is compelling and has made me want to re-watch with a feminist eye (that’s my excuse, anyway).
There are some pretty profound reflections on self and family and death but it’s far from gloomy – I’d say the tone is more optimistic, even life-affirming. However it’s described, it’s well worth a read.

Quirky tales and anecdotes, great for reading in breaks from other books. A very distinct voice, funny and perceptive.

I really enjoyed the plot. The first few chapters though took me a little while to get into as it wasn’t really clear what was going on and then it became interesting with stories such as women happily living on their own however it wasn’t as interesting after that point and it was difficult to read for me personally.

The Title essay 'The Crane Wife' came out a few years ago - I had not read it before now, and this essay was definitely brilliant. A couple of the essays didn't capture me the same way (The X files and also Rebecca - now that ending is spoilt for me also) However those are minor complaints as each essay contains really wonderful reflections and universal experiences on womanhood, love, relationships and ultimately being true to oneself (even when you don't have it all figured out). I really enjoyed CJ's writing style and narrative voice and would recommend particularly if looking to read more female-authored essay collections. Thanks to Netgalley for the arc!

I don't typically read a great deal of non-fiction but I liked the idea of this. However, I just couldn't get into it, and connect with the story or characters.

Thank you to the publisher and writer for an advanced copy.

I have to be honest, there’s a part of me that wants to score this a three – but, I have to be equally honest and say that’s more of a reflection on me as a reader, than the author.

I went into this blind, having never heard of CJ Hauser, let alone read any of her previous work. Unlike many other reviewers, I’d not had the pleasure of stumbling across the title essay before, so I think, in some ways, I may have been at a bit of a disadvantage.

The problem with a collection of anything – short stories, essays etc is that the whole can be marked down by the few. As is somewhat inevitable, some of these essays were infinitely superior to others. Frankly, I really enjoyed the short and snappy, fast paced earlier essays in the collection, the familial recollections which were funny and insightful. Many of the longer ones felt out of place as a result, and in part, bored me.

Having not seen The Philadelphia Story (I no longer feel I need to – CJ Hauser proper plot spoilt that one) or read Rebecca (I tried, aged 13, and it overwhelmed me) – these two essays made me feel like the odd one out at a party. I could listen in, and occasionally nod along, but for the largest part, didn’t feel I belonged there. Though, plus side, I probably will try Rebecca again now as a result of that essay, so it’s not all bad.

It was that realisation that bumped me from my mediocre three. Not all of this was going to thrill me, and that’s OK. It doesn’t have to. However, there was enough content there that made me smile, laugh, nod along knowingly to or stop and reflect.

As someone who is currently trying to push herself out of her reading comfort zone, this definitely ticked the box for me. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who feels they should be doing something else with their reading time – this isn’t my kind of thing at all, and I think I am left with a sense of having enjoyed the journey overall.

I have given up on this! Which is most unlike me. The idea of brief extracts of events seemed good, of brief essays to make the memoir - but then the style changed. The characters were not memorable and I struggled to retain any sense of the plot, where the characters were heading in every sense, and what the whole point was meant to be. The re-telling of a vintage Katharine Hepburn film finally made me give up - it went on FOREVER.
I'm disappointed - maybe as much with myself for not persevering - especially as the critics rave about it.

A powerful collection of essays - punchy and insightful. Each can be read stand-alone but found them addictive and ended up reading several in each sitting. A very wide range of topics, each story well told without any sentimentality. Wonderful