Splinters

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes the riveting story of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage - an exploration of motherhood, art and new love.

'Never less than gripping... Reads like a classic' Observer
'Exceptional... thrilling and bitter and fulfilling' Vogue

How do you rebuild a life? How do you move forward into joy when haunted by loss? How do you claim hope, while accepting the harm you've caused?

This is the story of a ruptured marriage - one that was once brimming with hope. It is also the story of Leslie Jamison's consuming love for her young daughter, and the shaping legacy of her own parents' complicated bond. Exceptionally astute, and written with remarkable candour, Splinters is an account of motherhood, art and love, and what it means for a woman to be many things at once.

'A treatise on the contradictions of being a mother, a partner, a daughter and an artist - singly, and all at once' New Statesman
'Jamison encapsulates lived reality with evocative, embodied detail' Financial Times
'Unputdownable... squishing layer upon layer of resonant truths into meticulously crafted paragraphs' Red

About the Author

Leslie Jamison grew up in Los Angeles. Educated at Harvard College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she has also worked as an innkeeper in California, a schoolteacher in Nicaragua, and an office temp in Manhattan. She is the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams, as well as a novel, The Gin Closet, and the essay collection Make it Scream, Make it Burn. Her work has appeared in Harper's, The Atlantic, Oxford American, Virginia Quarterly Review, and the New York Times Magazine, where she is a contributing writer. She directs the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia University.