Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

This is a wonderful book, one that I bought instantly having loved her earlier collection MY MISSPENT YOUTH. Daum is a master of the personal, honest essay - with all warts described, no blemish concealed - and very much fits in the same bracket as Rebecca Solnit and Leslie Jamieson. Her ability to self-analyse transcends both of these, in my view. Highly recommended.

Fresh, funny, great read.

What a great collection of essays. Meghan Daum is a deep thinker, able to describe intangibles with such richness that at times I felt I was processing her words with my emotions rather than logic. Here's an example, from the chapter entitled "Not What It Used to Be," which was about perspective at midlife:"Most of us have unconscious disbeliefs about our lives, facts that we accept at face value but that still cause us to gasp just a little when they pass through our minds at certain angles. Mine are these: that my mother is dead..."and in the same chapter:"What I miss (from my youth) is the feeling that nothing has started yet, that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the gleaming architecture that will make up the skyline of the rest of my life."These are just two examples from one essay. There is so much more in this book, not the least of which is her humor. In the first chapter, in which she chronicles her mother's death, Daum says,"It's amazing what the living expect of the dying. We expect wisdom, insight, burst of clarity that are then reported back to the undying in the urgent staccato of a telegram: I HAVE THE ANSWER. STOP. THEY'RE WAITING FOR ME. STOP. EVERYONE WHO DIED BEFORE. STOP. AND THEY LOOK GREAT. STOP."Meghan Daum's writing is never so profound as in the last chapter where she describes occupying the thinnest strip of existence between life and death, in October 2010. She almost died from a bacterial infection that confounded the doctors (who could not have saved her; her body somehow saved itself).Daum's writing isn't difficult to understand, but it's deep, multihued, and layered. I found if I read the essays twice, and at a time in the day when I had more mental energy, they were even more valuable than I thought on first pass. So, obviously, I'm going to have to now go back to Amazon and order the paperback, so I can dog-ear and mark up the book. REALLY well done. This one is a keeper.

the first time i've ever read one of her books. i found it well written, highly enjoyable and relatable! her writing style is very amusing and made me laugh out loud on occasion. the only reason i gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because i too have a difficult mother/daughter relationship with my own daughter, so it was uncomfortable to read the chapter about the authors mothers death. it makes me sad to think that my own daughter might have similar conflicting feelings about my demise. that said, i found it fitting that she bookends the book with chapters about her mothers death experience and her own near death experience.

I haven't finished the book yet, but I don't think that's required to know that Meghan Daum nailed it.I came home last night way past my bedtime and picked up the book when I should have been asleep. It was an exercise is sheer willpower to put it down in the middle for the first essay "Matricide." Just a few sentences in and I'm dying to know what went down during the last days of her mother's life, which would make normally make me feel guilty and a little gross, but somehow not in this case. Daum makes you feel like it's okay to look (Which is a testament to her craft), and it seems to me that this whole book is about that: it's okay not to be grief stricken when your mother dies, it's okay to not change after a traumatic experience, it's okay to love your dog more than your boyfriend (my words, not hers, extrapolating a bit here) and it's okay to not buy into precious food culture. Especially cool to read stuff like this after turning 40, when you all of sudden don't care at all about your own peccadilloes (oh, say, an obsession with wallpaper or the Real Housewives franchise) and want someone else to say that they too, are not buying in either to all the overwrought, manufactured "appropriate" responses to life's big and small issues.I loved Daum's last book, "Life Would Be Perfect if I Lived in That House" because she wove together a personal narrative about a seemingly singular obsession with real estate with what ultimately turns out to be a common, universal obsession with real estate. I think the same is about to happen here, and I can't wait.

Fairly well written, but sad. Usually when someone moves from child to parent they shed their resentments against their parents, it's called growing up. Delaying parenthood is not progress, many like Megan delay too long and miss it all together, forever stuck in selfish adolescence, forever critical of their parents. Her illness matured her somewhat, however. I was struck by her failure to completely mature and found it sad that she missed her chance to be a mother. I hear this similar story a lot, here is no perfect situation, no perfect time,, there is never enough money. You become a different person when you raise a child, a better person, a more developed person. The most precious resource we have is time, and families are for young people.