Reading the Waves: A Memoir

This gorgeous, gut-wrenching memoir in fragments and stories brings bestselling novelist Yuknavitch’s (Thrust) gifts to the surface while offering readers glimpses into profound depths. She shows the intersections of her life as a woman, writer, and swimmer, always in danger of drowning under the weight of the words and worlds she carries with her. From the book title’s nod to Virginia Woolf’s The Waves to the relentless pursuit of new stories, this is an exploration of the rocks in one’s pockets that, if not released, prove fatal. Yuknavitch writes about her father’s abuse, her complex relationship with her mother, and the relationships that existed at the center and on the edges of her own identity and the death of her child. But this isn’t a simple meditation on loss or a collection of remembered fragments from life; instead, it pushes readers to contemplate how they might read their own life stories with the same complex emotions they bring to reading novels.