Over on my booktube channel (Hannah's Books), I shared this book in my description of exciting books forthcoming in early March. Link to the particular discussion: https://youtu.be/O49TMDNluh0?si=ctbz8aTzED4OBUBa&t=413

Her thesis seemed a little hazy. I would have liked to see sharper focus as to what exactly she was getting at with the connection of loneliness, solitary lifestyles, and writing. It seemed a pieced together collection of books the author has enjoyed and pieces of memoir.

Emily Hodgson Anderson’s Shadow Work is a luminous, genre-defying exploration of reading, writing, and solitude—part literary criticism, part memoir, and wholly a meditation on the quiet, often invisible labor of connection. With precision, grace, and emotional candor, Anderson examines how literature serves both as a mirror and a bridge: reflecting our most intimate selves while linking us to others across time, place, and circumstance.

At its core, Shadow Work is about the paradoxes of solitude. As a single mother, academic, and writer, Anderson inhabits multiple roles that are both isolating and deeply engaged with others. Through the lens of her own experience, she asks: what does it mean to live a life shaped by language? How do books both comfort and confront us in our most vulnerable moments?

The brilliance of the book lies in its fluid weaving of personal reflection with sharp literary insight. Anderson places canonical figures like Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and Shakespeare in dialogue with children’s authors such as Roald Dahl and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and contemporary voices like Zadie Smith. These unexpected pairings yield fresh, intimate readings that illuminate how literature mediates our understanding of longing, identity, and unseen labor—especially that of women and mothers.

Rather than offering distant, academic interpretations, Anderson engages with these texts as if they were old friends—comforting, confounding, and sometimes quietly revolutionary. Her writing is elegant but never aloof; it carries the tenderness of someone who has turned to books not for escape, but for survival.

What makes Shadow Work so affecting is Anderson’s honesty about the emotional costs and quiet rewards of a life of care—care for children, students, literature, and one’s own inner life. In an age of digital noise and constant performance, Shadow Work invites us to reflect on what remains hidden, and how the act of reading itself can become an act of radical presence.

Verdict:
Shadow Work is a profound, beautifully written meditation on the intersections of literature, loneliness, and the labor of love. Emily Hodgson Anderson has written a quietly powerful book that will resonate deeply with readers who have ever turned to stories to make sense of their own

An account of the author's life immersed in reading and writing. I especially enjoyed first chapter, about the relationship between autobiography and academic writing. For fans of Sarah Chihaya's recent Bibliophobia, though I did prefer that book.

I wanted so much to like this book. Who doesn't like a book about books. But the author's self seemed to get in the way of the text and this made the book weaker.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for offering this ARC in exchange of an honest review.

Very engaging and interesting read. Very well developed and ambitious work for the self. Will be recommending to library collection and patrons.

A beautiful rumination on the bookish life. Shadow Work: Loneliness and the Literary Life by Emily Hodgson Anderson is a thoughtful presentation of the author's views on reading, writing, motherhood, and community. The essays center around various authors and literary works but the throughline is the author's own lived experience. Writers in particular will find a companionable intimacy in this book, although I think everyone will enjoy it. The writing is gorgeous, the ideas are interesting, and the emotions ring true to me. Loved every moment I spent reading this one! Thank you to the author, Columbia University Press, and NetGalley for the eARC.

Shadow work is an intimate look at the authors personal life as she share her experiences as a single parent.This is a unique blended memoir from her personal life to her literary work life as an English professor.This is so interesting the type of book I will continue to dip in to.I hope the author writes another memoir sharing more about her personal and professional life.#netgalley #shadowwork

Shadow Work by Professor Emily Hodgson Anderson is a smooth and thought-provoking journey into single parenting, life and its wisdom, literature, and reading as a lifestyle and a means to defy loneliness.

The interlace of life stories, writers’ work, literature, and the author’s input weave a beautiful and unique tapestry.

This is a book that keeps giving; the more I go back and read it, I am bound to find intriguing details that render me in awe of the written word, of the author’s depth, and of the pivotal role of literature in casting aside any looming loneliness.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Columbia University Press.
Many thanks to Professor Emily Hodgson Anderson for a book that will stay with me for a long time.

A thought-inducing read about how reading, literature and writing defy loneliness and bring connection despite the solitary nature of several activities involved with fiction.
Anderson is an expert in literature and brings her personal experience as a single parent and reader, critic and teacher in these discussions.
The opening quote was a wonderful match for this book, preparing the reader to what is to come.
I was more engaged with the material when I had prior knowledge about the writers, and their work (especially if I had read them before), that should come as no surprise, I suppose.
I will give this another read not to miss any details. Overall, I found this a good meditative and philosophical study of literature and reading.