The Argonauts

Took me a while (and a restart) to get into it but worth sticking with. A really good read. And bracing, in a good way :-)

An amazing book, flawlessly written and changed my perspective on a number of things. Essential reading!

You feel you are listening to her thoughts. She has a well exercised and erudite mind and articulates well subtle sensations and moods in clear and considered prose. It focus is not egotistical or self-indulgent. She has a detachment that allows her to examine intimately her relationship with her baby Izzy and her partner Harry. It also gave a lot of new people to read, like Winnicott and Bechdel. Thank you!

This got fantastic reviews elsewhere, and I bought it for insights into the gender identity debate. I've not read anything by Maggie Nelson before. On the plus side, the central metaphor of the Argo will stay with me, and the book is powerful testimony to some of the different ways in which human beings love and are loved. But I have found it hard going. I think this mainly because I'm unfamiliar with almost all of the critical theorists / feminist theorists/ genderqueer authors and activiists that Maggie Nelson references in almost every paragraph. She doesn't wear her learning lightly. It reads much of the time like one half of a conversation with debating partners whose voices are unknown to me. So my mistake - I think this is a memoir that will be important for people who already have a good knowledge of genderqueer and identity politics.

For this volume on identity, love, art, and simply on being a human, I will always be grateful to the person who recommended it to me: what a gorgeous present for the soul.

Incorporates a lot of complex theories into the narrative without it feeling dry. Beautiful flow to the language and a really interesting story being told. Definitely not a niche LGBT book. The straight friends I've recommended it to loved it too.

this book is brilliant, would recommend to anyone interested in gender/motherhood/love/etc i listened to the audiobook first so when i bought a physical copy i was surprised to find that it doesn't actually have any chapters!!

Don't buy on Kindle if you can't see well! Although the book is good, the kindle version is not good at all. I use kindle as it's great for visual impairment, but if you up the font-size on this one, half the copy disappears off the side of the screen. Bad design.