Customer Reviews

Life As We Know It: A Collection of Personal Essays from Salon.com

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There is something beautifully eerie about the accuracy with which "Life As We Know It" depicts the rhythm of existence and its inherent jarring; one emerges from reading with the sense of having lived more years than chronologically accurate, or at least of having gained the experiential wisdom that would come with those years. This "collection of personal essays" is indeed personal; I had to bind the thing with a rubber band after reading it (something I've never done to a book before), as if it were my own raw material to be shared only when I'd come to terms with its truths.
The "Life" section at Salon.com- the source of this collection- claims some of the finest essayists of the genre, as this small volume demonstrates. Inciting outrageous laughter as well as speechless indignation, "Life As We Know It" elucidates some of the most joyful and most painful, rarely shared yet universally occurring experiences. These stories are for anyone to claim; you will feel that you own some of them. As for the stories you hold: you just might learn to claim more of those, too.

My husband is a great fan of Salon, I got this for him for his birthday, he loves it!

The essays in this collection revolve around the ideas of love and family like the planets revolve around the sun: some are closer to the ideal than others, but they all give in to the pull of gravity; they all acknowledge its due. Titles range from "Reproductive as a Rabbit, Abstinent as a Nun," "I Miss Lesbian Reproductive Sex," and "Born to Pop Pills" to "A Matter of Life in Death" and "A Mother Without a Child." Some made me laugh, some creeped me out a little, and others made me cry. You'll meet a woman who sees her ex-husband for the first time in thirty-five years, another who is married to a man she met when he was in prison (and where, in fact, he's spent most of their marriage), the man whose father was Frosty the Snowman's voice, and a woman who dreads explaining to others that her extra weight, her baby weight, is from her full-term stillbirth. It's the book I most frequently pull off the shelf; it's a gift to get a glimpse into these people's lives.

It may not be life as you know it, but these are lives you want to know.