"Fiercely written, full of urgency and daring, Woman House tears at the structures and constrictions passed down from one generation to the next. Each rupture of memory is a painful exposure, the telling and untelling and retelling a balm to the mother wound. Part treatise, part confession, part interrogation, all of it tinted with anger, love, curiosity, and compassion, Woman House is a meditation on the desire for desire — a love song to the unsated self."—Kim Barnes, author of In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country, Pulitzer Prize Finalist"At once intimate, surgical, elliptical, and probing, these essays explore womanhood and daughterhood through the lens of art, pleasure, and trauma. Westerfield finds meaning in the smallest acts and rituals, trying to make sense of what it means to live authentically in and with the body. A feverish, glowing book."—Aysegul Savas, author of The Anthropologists "Lauren Westerfield's Woman House is a beautiful study of environment and how it is a living, breathing entity just as much as the people who move within it. Through her hauntingly elegant writing, Woman House walks us through the environments of the heart, of the self and body, and of the family. This all converges into a moving story of the relationships with not only ourselves but also with those we hold most closely to our hearts. Westerfield's essays notice the shifts in life both subtle and obvious and invite us into the discoveries, too. She leaves each of us a little bit changed, a bit more reflective, and a lot more connected to the world."—Athena Dixon, author of The Loneliness Files"This is a book about love and transformation. A memoir of loving and caring for a mother with whom she has an enduring but complex relationship, Woman House chronicles how a young woman learns to write her own story instead of accepting the cookie cutter narratives this society is so quick to force the minds and bodies of women into. A beautifully written account of coming to know and accept oneself, Woman House is a book that invites readers to greet the world and themselves with tenderness and care."—Kathryn Nuernberger, author of HELD: Essays in Belonging"This is a book interested in what happens to our self-knowledge when we understand new things about our family history, in the traumas that are passed down to us, and what sense we make of them. Along the way, Westerfield explores Louise Bourgeois's art, old Hollywood films, the writing of Beat poet Joanne Kyger, and Jane Austen's novels, as well as medical research and the language of visual arts to explore spirals, repetition, personal habits, and family patterns. Westerfield deftly twists these many threads into her own kind of spirals, then untangles, until this sharp, complex, layered read becomes a reckoning, an unfurling."—Arianne Zwartjes, author of These Dark Skies"Rendered in gorgeous language, Woman House traces the sometimes-fraught relationship between the narrator and her mother, amplified by the pandemic. Each of these essays reveal what it means to live inside a woman's body, through illness and aging and sexual violence. A collection that is both deeply thoughtful and deeply personal, Woman House imagines a way forward, even when our bodies and our memories fail."—Laura Furlan
