The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [0]
Praise
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Title Page
Introduction
Epigraph
I. Holding Breath
The Chronology of Water
Metaphor
On Sound and Speech
The Best Friend
Suitcase
Deliverance
Love Grenade I
The Other Lubbock
Zombie
What It’s Not
Crooked Lovesong
Family Drama
This is Not About my Sister
Ash
II. Under Blue
Baptismal
Swimming with Amateurs
Father
How To Ride a Bike
The Less Than Merry Pranksters
III. The Wet
A Happy Childhood
Illness as Metaphor
A Burning
The Hairy Girls
Nemesis
Love Grenade II
A Body in a Kayak
Writing
About Hair and Skin
Harder
My Mother Demonology
IV. Resuscitations
A Drowning Scene
Distilled
My Lover, Writing
Short Story
Gray Matter
Secular Miracle
Dreaming in Women
V. The Other Side of Drowning
Run On
Collision as Metaphor
How to Love Your Mother After She’s Dead
Your Tax Dollars At Work
Conversion
Ecstatic State
The Scarlett Letter
Sun
In the Company of Men
A Sanctuary
Angina
How to Hold Your Breath
Water
The Other Side of Drowning
À La Recherché du Temps Perdu
A Small Ocean
Wisdom is a Motherfucker
Interview with Lidia Yuknavitch
Copyright Page
FLOODED WITH LIGHT and incandescent beauty, The Chronology of Water cuts through the heart of the reader. These fierce life stories gleam, fiery images passing just beneath the surface of the pages. You will feel rage, fear, release, and joy, and you will not be able to stop reading this deeply brave and human voice.
DIANA ABU-JABER, author of Origin: A Novel
I LOVE THIS book and I am thankful that Lidia Yuknavitch has written it for me and for everyone else who has ever had to sometimes kind of work at staying alive. It’s about the body, brain, and soul of a woman who has managed to scratch up through the slime and concrete and crap of life in order to resurrect herself. The kind of book Janis Joplin might have written if she had made it through the fire - raw, tough, pure, more full of love than you thought possible and sometimes even hilarious. This is the book Lidia Yuknavitch was put on the planet to write for us.
REBECCA BROWN, author of The Gifts of the Body
FROM THE MOMENT I picked up The Chronology of Water, I couldn’t put it down, and I thought about it long after I’d finished. Reading this book is like diving into Yuknavitch’s most secret places, where, really, we all want memoir to take us, but it so rarely does. The reader emerges wiser, enlightened, and changed.
KERRY COHEN, author of Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity
THIS INTENSELY POWERFUL memoir touches depths yet unheard of in contemporary writing. I read it at one sitting and wondered for days after about love, time, and truth. Can’t get me any more excited than this.
ANDREI CODRESCU, author of The Poetry Lesson
THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER’S central metaphor works beautifully: we all keep our heads above water, look around, and enjoy our corporeal life despite all the reasons not to; beyond that, the book is immensely impressive to me on a human level: the narrator/speaker/protagonist/author emerges from a seriously hellish childhood and spooky adolescence into a middle age not of bliss, certainly, but of convincing engagement and satisfaction.
DAVID SHIELDS, author of Reality Hunger : A Manifesto
I’VE READ MS. YUKNAVITCH’S book The Chronology of Water, cover to cover, a dozen times. I am still reading it. And I will, most likely, return to it for inspiration and ideas, and out of sheer admiration, for the rest of my life. The book is extraordinary.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK, author of Pygmy
LIDIA YUKNAVITCH’S MEMOIR The Chronology of Water is a brutal beauty bomb and a true love song. Rich with story, alive with emotion, both merciful and utterly merciless, I am forever altered by every stunning page. This is the book I’m going to press into everyone’s hands for years to come. This is the book I’ve been waiting to read all of my life.
CHERYL STRAYED, author of Wild
This book is for-and written through - Andy