Jo Ann Beard was one of my favorite discoveries of 2013 (though I entirely owe the "discovering" to Sara), so I of course had to snatch up the first of her two published books, as well. It is eating me up that there are only two!

This one is straightforward memoir, in short essay pieces. Her form really is creative nonfiction, memory-plumbing and storytelling. Although she published her more recent book In Zanesville as a novel, a large portion of that material is not-at-all veiled borrowings from her self. Which is fine. I think that's interesting. The writing's so good, call it whatever you want. Let it spring from wherever you get it from.

Anyway, what I mean is that it didn't surprise me to encounter the atmosphere of her life (especially her childhood) in this book; it felt familiar and I was glad to be closer to it with this writing, even though so much of the storytelling is so very uncomfortable. I definitely have a threshold for uncomfortable, and a few of these toed that line (mostly her bleak dating years) when there wasn't enough counterweight of something else, irony or affection.

But she is one of those writers with one hell of a gift for writing childhood, nailing the really mean and really funny details. She remembers (or at least extrapolates) enough to bring us back there to what children do and don't get about what goes on, and meanwhile keeps her adult eye always on her parents. Being able to contextualize your parents will always be one of the most fascinating things about adulthood to me. I think one's parents are a mystery you will never truly crack even though you have every clue. I collect so many clues. Does everyone feel that way, or is it just me? When a really good writer writes about their parents, I believe everyone does.

About half of the stories here are about being young (sometimes very, very young); feelings about big sisters, cousins, toys. The other half are about her adulthood, particularly her marriage and divorce, the story of which is sprinkled all throughout.

By the end, I was invested enough that I wished there was something more of a through-narrative to tell me all the missing details of her personal history. But that's impossible, in a collection of short pieces, and I'm a nosy person who likes details even if the teller doesn't want to show them to me. So that's not the author's fault. I never really consider it a criticism when I love something in a book so much that I just want a lot more than it has to give me.

About some particular pieces:

"The Fourth State of Matter" is such a good piece it would be worth buying a book for by itself, but as good luck has it you can already read that one for free. (I already wrote about it a couple of months ago.)

"The Family Hour" was the other jaw-drop standout for me, a stunner from her childhood that reads very close to the novelized family elements from In Zanesville, with the added horror-twinge of it being definitely from real memories. The sewer grate, the beer bottle, the back door. This story was amazing.

"Out There" was a brilliant and brief one about powering through a terrifying experience on a long trip. It reminded me of a segment out of Wild. The facts of it made a good story all on its own, but it's her way of showing the background that gives it weight. Us knowing where her head was reminds us that we never really know where anyone else's head is while they do anything. Which is cool, but isolating, and also sometimes people are terrifying.

The title piece is really long, bringing up the last fifty pages. It's about her friendship with her best friend, weaving stories from middle school up to their current relationship. Something about the way that their adult friendship is written made me laugh so, so hard a bunch of times. It's like the way she writes the blunt blindness of kids, only they're grownups so it's even funnier and sadder at the same time. I loved it. Also, for some reason lately there's nothing I like better than stories about sneaking around at night (I don't know) and this has a great one.

And definitely can't let this go without mentioning my other favorite character Hal, which was Jo's favorite doll when she was three, who figures significantly into a short Preface to the book as well as the longer story "Bulldozing the Baby." (Jo Ann Beard, I love you, but your titles.)

So what now? I don't know. These days, the author appears to have (what is hopefully) a nice teaching job at Sarah Lawrence, but her faculty page isn't up to date with publications, and she has no proper website. So she's just a person! What. That's fine. I would just be excited if there were more to go around. I'm so into this writer, you guys, and I can't quite handle the fact that she hasn't had a wide and prolific publishing career.

So I had Google do some homework and did my best to come up with a little Internet Bibliography for Jo Ann Beard.

Firstly, there are some pieces out there that are from this book:

* "The Fourth State of Matter" (via The New Yorker, 1996), which everyone should read.
* "Bonanza" (via The Iowa Review, 1995), which I also loved.
* Recording of the author reading "Behind the Screen," not one of my favorites but hey.

And other works, free and not:

* "Maybe It Happened." Memoir. (O Magazine, 2008.) You can read this for free! But it's very slight, almost like a teaser for another story.
* "All the Many Beasts." Reporting. (Byliner, 1998.) Paywalled, with a free trial. Also with a little use of caching…
* "Undertaker, Please Drive Slow." Reporting. (Tin House, 2002.) Only available by hard copy back issue. Looks unbearably depressing, anyway.
* "Werner." Reporting. (Tin House, 2006.) Only available by hard copy back issue. I really want to read this one! It's also anthologized in The Best American Essays 2007, in case for some reason one ever runs into a copy of that.

Audio

Some essays in this were better than others, but still was a joy to read. Took a bit longer because I just read essay by essay so I could pick up and leave.

This is a beautiful collection of carefully crafted essays. The attention to detail and the imagery of the memories the author is describing are lovely and breathtaking. The honesty but careful evasion inherent many of the pieces is intriguing. Others have complained that the author does not let you in to see the real person under the writing. This is true for many of them, but it really wasn't her goal. She gives away exactly as much as she wants. The pieces are fantastic, but the one that really stands out is "The Fourth State of Matter". It is a powerful and haunting piece that will cling to the edge of your mind for a period of time and make you reconsider a great deal of things.

Superb writing.

Melanie, read this book!

In college I was assigned to read her short story, "The Fourth State of Matter" which is about the shooting at The University of Iowa. I wanted to read it again after the elementary school shooting in Connecticut. This book is a collection of her short stories. She is a gifted creative nonfiction writer. While I was reading her work, I felt that I was with her in the story.

I read this book while I was in college after Joann Beard gave a talk at my school. I remember very clearly how she spoke about writing on a sentence level and how she could never move on from one sentence to the next until it is absolutely perfect. She found this frustrating as it made her work very slowly. That said, I think every sentence in this book is perfect. I read it with such awe. I still think about it all the time many years later.

There were a handful of lyrical phrases that stood out to me but I do NOT understand the adulation for this book. While I didn't hate it I wouldn't recommend it or read it again. It was confusing and just when I got used to the pattern of how she jumped around she completely changed how she did it. I also don't think she told a story. I realize it's a memoir but she could have spent a little more time tying it together even within the structure she used,that is, I don't need her to put the events in order. In the end I just really didn't CARE about the character/narrator.