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

Details

ISBN13: 9781783788934
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 272
Edition:
Publication Date: 15 Apr 2025
Publisher: Granta Books
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.8(H)x12.9(L)
Weight (gm):

Author Biography

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.

Reviews

An exceptional read, guiding [the] reader through [Leslie's] thrilling and bitter and fulfilling affairs of the heart * Vogue *
Beautifully interwoven and unputdownable... squishing layer upon layer of resonant truths into meticulously crafted paragraphs * Red *
[Splinters'] pages are lit by flinty humour and grownup joy as thought and feeling are joined in prose that's intimate and exacting... never less than gripping... A mother-daughter love story that reads like a classic * Observer *
An utterly absorbing account of motherhood, love and loss, in jaw-dropping sentences. Jamison transforms familiar subjects into something elemental and unique, and is one of the finest non-fiction storytellers at work in the world today. -- Sinead Gleeson
Splinters is as sharp and piercing as its title - a brilliant reckoning with what it means to make art, a self, a family, a life... This memoir is a masterclass -- Maggie Smith, author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
Leslie Jamison's blazing memoir kept me riveted for the single day it took to guzzle it down. This wry, hilarious, and utterly unputdownable book is a gift that feels like an immediate hit and a forever classic -- Mary Karr, author of Lit and The Art of Memoir
An astounding achievement. This is a memoir of emotional depth that reminds us that love, in its fullness, is as much a construction of jagged and flinty edges as an ideal of cloudless skies -- Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias
Splinters is a treatise on the contradictions of being a mother, a partner, a daughter and an artist - singly, and all at once... Jamison's love for her daughter is the crux of this book * New Statesman *