I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did.

But that's unfair: I did like it, most of the way through. For most of the book it was one of those "I'll have to get my own copy after I return it to the library" books. And then it wasn't.

Crispin writes very well and has read widely and with great consideration (though as another reviewer notes, her choices tend to the dead white canon). She obviously thinks deeply about what she reads, the lives of the authors, and her surroundings. Those thoughts are often incredibly insightful and written in language that is lively and new. I read the first 2/3-3/4 of the book with little but pleasure.

But the little bits of displeasure got bigger and eventually took over the good.

This book could be viewed as the literary exemplar of the saying "wherever you go, there you are."

Jessa was sick of herself and her life in Chicago. So she sold almost everything she owned and began a tour of Europe, living from what she could carry in two suitcases, taking them from city to city and writing essays about her own experiences there, compared with the experiences there of some of her literary idols. It's an interesting idea and provides a solid framework for the book. The problem is that she just ends up being sick of herself and her life in every country in Europe, too.

Eventually, this reader wanted to see some kind of narrative arc, or at least a narrative progression: she hated herself at the beginning of the book, she hated herself all through the middle, and at the end, she still hated herself. She helplessly pursued relationships with unavailable jerks who built their courtship on lies, and could never find the self-confidence to see them for what they were; she simultaneously pursued sex-only relationships that left her feeling empty and awful; in both cases, despite the misery she was in, she declared it all preferable to the awfulness of monogamous domesticity (apparently the only alternative she could conceive of for herself) and portrayed the affair(s) as being "sexually adventurous," not deceitful.

All of it defended on the terribly adolescent idea that Art is built on Suffering, so she'd better pursue Suffering as hard as she can; as if Suffering doesn't find us all wherever we live, no matter how settled our lives are. It found the Bronte sisters, it found Emily Dickinson, Jessa Crispin, it will find you. You don't need to run after it. If you need to suffer, if you're determined to suffer, why not suffer in more comfortable surroundings? Why does that Suffering lose its integrity and validity if you suffer in a decent two-bedroom apartment with a closet that holds more than one pair of shoes?

You get the idea.

For most of the book, I read with pleasure and the occasional twinge of sympathy and compassion. Poor girl; how terrible to be locked into such an unforgiving and unhappy perspective. By the end the pity, compassion and impatience outweighed the pleasure. Then I got to the London chapter, in which she complains--without reflection, without insight, without irony--about how awful beautiful women are because they can pretend to be weak and manipulate men into getting them everything they want. This is just straight-up misogyny. If it had come from the pen of a male author, there would have been protests and boycotts.

Even at the end there were passages and reflections I found genuinely beautiful, original, insightful and profound. Just not enough to overcome the impression I had that Jessa believes a happy person is a shallow, stupid, terrible creature she's determined not to be. Which is her choice, and no one suffers from it more than she does.
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[b:Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own|22889766|Spinster Making a Life of One's Own|Kate Bolick|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1438054638s/22889766.jpg|42459922] and this book should have swapped titles. Bolick's project was much more a "Dead Ladies" one; Crispin's is more accurately the tale of a spinster.

Considering I'm a sensitive, college-educated woman who lost my mother to cancer at 24 and has always had a boyfriend but balk at marriage, I related to Bolick's work much more.

Crispin's misery (including being the other woman) seems entirely self-induced. I liked the chapter on Maud Gonne and Rebecca West, though. ( )

This conjures up exactly some of the weariness and ennui of being a solo traveller, but at the same time it made me want to pack my bags and explore the coastal Adriatic. Crispin filters literature and the lives of writers through the lenses of the European cities she finds herself and her physical and emotional baggage in, and it's a lovely combination. ( )

A full review is up here. ( )

Okay, let's come right out and say that there were a few parts where I had to mentally separate the author as the author from the author as my sister, to sort of ignore that this is my childhood she's alluding to here, my hometown, me. But those parts were mercifully small. (I will go back and process those parts later, though I'm not sure Jessa would want me to.)

Anyway, biased or not, I thought it was marvelous. Especially the Berlin chapter, which (despite there being an actual introduction) introduces the theme, the concept, the purpose of the rest of the book. At a loss in Berlin, Jessa turns to her old friend William James, who also fled to Berlin for a good part of his life, also at a time when he was struggling to find a purpose, a calling, a standard for success. James, like all the dead ladies in this book, fled his home country, choosing a new land and new culture to call his own (to varying degrees of permanence). As Jessa travels from place to place, she communes with someone who has gone before her, someone who has also shucked off the standards, the expectations, the bindings of home, and built a new life of their own choosing some place new.

As she does so, she draws lines, both obvious and unexpected, between her own struggles for meaning, the personal struggles of her dead ladies, and more universal struggles, like the artist vs. the censor, adult children struggling with the expectations of their parents, women choosing whether to exploit, struggle with, or subvert the roles made available to them in a patriarchal society.

A marvelous book that should be more widely read. ( )