Review: Heating & Cooling

Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, by Beth Ann Fennelly (W. W. Norton & Co 2017)

First line: “In every book my husband’s written, a character named Colin suffers a horrible death. This is because my boyfriend before I met my husband was named Colin.”

Can I just go on record to say that I love it when poets write memoirs? Honestly, I love it when poets write most things, but it seems especially memoirs. They have such a mastery of language, a way of distilling emotions down to the perfect imagery, that just so effectively conveys what they’re trying to express. I just love them. Beth Ann Fennelly’s collection of micro-memoirs is no different. I loved this collection to pieces.

I was familiar with Fennelly from her collection of letters, Great With Child: Letters to a Young Mother, which was gifted to me at my baby shower and which I also loved (and have since gifted to several other first time moms). This collection felt different, but just as wonderful. Some of these micro-memoirs — at times a few pages, other times only a paragraph or two, a couple times only one sentence — were laugh out loud funny, heartbreaking, and heart-warming, all while being incredibly poignant and thoughtful. I especially loved the chapters entitled “Married Love” of which there were five, that captured small moments of the unique and real ways love is found in a marriage (the first line above captures part of one such chapter). I think I’m going to have to get a copy of this book for my shelves (something I so rarely do — buy books I’ve already read), because I can imagine pulling it off the shelf just to read a few pages when I need a smile or inspiration.