The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays | 
 enlarge | Author: Caroline Knapp
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 1018680
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Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1
ASIN: B0007D9VK0
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Book Description
From the best-selling author of Drinking: A Love Story and Appetites: Why Women Want, a collection spanning fifteen years of witty, thoughtful, provocative observations on modern culture and women's lives. Caroline Knapp's was one of this country's most intelligent, graceful, and humorous voices in memoir. Her readers are known not just for their number, but for their intense connection to her work. In Drinking: A Love Story, she homed in on the often unspeakable fears and longings that led to her alcoholism and back again. In Pack of Two, she trained her eye on the bonds between humans and animals. And in Appetites: Why Women Want, she brought her rigorous scrutiny to the ways in which culture shapes a woman's body and her hunger. Now, with The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays, Knapp shows us that her vision through a wider lens is as brilliant as through a narrow one. This collection of essays spanning fifteen years paints the fullest picture of this wonderful writer that we've yet seen, but it's also a remarkably full portrait of a writing life, showing how the same themes can engage--and expand--a writer over a lifetime. Here are her major preoccupations, with work and love, with growth and loss, with distance and intimacy. Solitude, shyness, cereal for dinner, the fine line between boredom and lust, why women ask stupid questions, mastering the art of healthful self-deception--subjects that are universally poignant while charming, funny, and incisive--are explored in both long, thoughtful pieces and light, hilarious essays.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 I got very interested in this author August 29, 2007
I have read other nonfiction essays by this author. They all have been very good. I won't spoil the clincher here but I wish she had more to offer us.
Recommended for fans of her earlier works April 10, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Caroline Knapp's fifth memoir was published posthumously after the author died from cancer at age forty-two. The book consists of newspaper and magazine essays written over a fifteen year period. The columns are presented thematically rather than chronologically, in sections about family relationships, grief/recovery/sobriety, the state of the world, and personal reflections.
Early essays discuss female friendships, girl crushes, and Knapp's relationship with her mother and father. She was a raging, active alcoholic when both passed away within a year of one another. Knapp also covers ground on two topics she's renowned for--anorexia (as described in her memoir Appetites: Why Women Want) and alcoholism (as described in Drinking: A Love Story). Her assays on recovery provide additional insight and reflection beyond what was in her other books. None of the essays were published during her active alcoholic period in the early 1990's (only one from 1989, a long essay about her eating disorder, was published prior to Knapp's sobriety).
In the lighter essays, Knapp returns to the familiar subject of her dog. One October 1998 piece for the Boston Phoenix is a rebuttal to Ron Rosenbaum's New York Observer column asserting the superiority of his cat over Knapp's dog. Other essays on the state of the world cover topics ranging from Linda Tripp s betrayal of her friend Monica Lewinsky, to life as an office drone in corporate America, to home decoration. The ruminations on life are hit-or-miss, and the fluffier pieces at the end aren't written as powerfully as Knapp's solid essays on addition and relationships.
If Knapp wasn't already a bestselling author of wide renown, this essay collection would be of little popular interest. The true gems are the essays which expound on the topics of her earlier works Drinking and Appetites. I recommend this book only to admirers looking for additional material from this accomplished and well-spoken woman.
 Her Death Was A Terrible Loss For American Essays July 22, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Caroline Knapp died in 2002 of lung cancer at the horribly early age of 42. She was almost my exact contemporary in age. I nearly died of a diabetic coma at about the same time, so there is a weird little echo of experience and sorrow when I think about her. I was already familiar with her funny book of faux-advice, "Alice K.'s Guide To Life", but I hadn't yet read all of her really great essays that are collected in "The Merry Recluse." (The title is a state of being to which I also aspire.) She wrote all of these terrific little pieces in the 1990's when she was at the height of her powers and apparently at a level of maturity and confidence that allowed her to look back with considerable wisdom. Caroline suffered intensely earlier in her life from anorexia, depression and anxiety, alcoholism and shyness. But she writes about these with clarity, grace, much much humor and tough-mindedness. She didn't wallow in victimization like so many do; above all she wanted to understand. In the long hot summer of 2006 perhaps my current fvorite essay in this volume is "Endless (and Endless) Summer", about how much she hated summer, how she preferred autumn, and how weird she felt when she saw all the summer-adoring people around her. Believe me Caroline; you read my mind. As you did over and over again in this book, as if we were friends who never met. And I'm seriously going to miss your wonderful, tenderly witty yet serious voice.
Trust Me- you need a Knapp. March 15, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Oh--how I wish she were still with us. Caroline Knapp is one of the best authors I've ever read. Humor, diversity, insight and fierce and fearless exploration of common human issues are just a few examples of what make her writing irreplaceable. Read through her book excerpts, columns and articles from newspaper and magazine in this wonderful collection. You will laugh, cry, reflect and ponder life's mysteries. Whether those mysteries be big or small makes no difference--Caroline manages to explore them all in the most meaningful and unique ways.
If you are a woman I absolutely guarantee this book will strike a chord in you.
If you are a fan this is simply a must-read.
If you are just meeting her then this is the perfect first introduction to our marvelously intelligent, dearly missed, late, great Caroline Knapp.
Illuminating daily life September 23, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Ms Knapp shows a remarkable facility to delve into various aspects of life and make them fascinating for the reader. She explores twindom, eating disorders,alcoholism and relationships in addition to various other subjects, with an equal facility to expand one's understanding on these topics. She also has a a wonderful sense of humor underlying even her most serious observations. I continue to enjoy this book despite the few topics in which I have no interest.
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