Notes to Self: Essays

"To read these essays is to understand the human condition more clearly, to reassess one's place in the world, and to reclaim one's experiences as real and valid." Sunday Independent
In this dazzling debut, Emilie Pine speaks to the events that have marked her life--to those invisible emotional disruptions for which our society has no adequate language, at once bittersweet, clandestine, and ordinary. She writes with radical honesty on the unspeakable grief of infertility, on caring for an alcoholic parent, on taboos around female bodies and female pain, on sexual violence and violence against the self. This is the story of one woman, and of all women.
Devastating, poignant, and wise--and joyful against the odds--Notes to Self is an unforgettable exploration of what it feels like to be alive and a daring act of rebellion against a society that is more comfortable with women's silence.

Emilie Pine is associate professor of modern drama at University College Dublin, Ireland. Pine has published widely as an academic and critic on culture and memory. Notes to Self is her first collection of personal essays.