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A review by scribepub
Godspeed: a memoir by Casey Legler
Reading Godspeed is an experience as invigorating, beautiful and punishing as standing under a waterfall. Legler is an unflinching chronicler of light and darkness, loneliness and embodiment, and the deep enchantments of sensation.
Helen MacDonald, author of H is for Hawk
Godspeed is a memoir for our times — an urgent, hypnotizing account of growing up and growing into ones skin under extreme circumstances. As brutal and original a telling as I can remember — of loneliness, of coping until the centre cannot hold. There is darkness here but in Casey Legler’s deft hands it serves the light. A cut-to-the-bone blues song in chapter form, these pages are touched, as she is, with lightning.
Michael Stipe
Exceptionally talented, reckless, separated from a true sense of herself, Legler could so easily have not survived her early life. The tension here is in how close she comes — by choice, or by default, in settings both elegant and ruined — and is still able to restore herself, her soul, and renew language itself to tell of it. Many of us would be well served by reading the last sentence of this memoir every day.
Amy Hempel
A coming-of-age drama captured through poetic prose and convincing honesty.
Kirkus
This is a heart-wrenching, coming-of-age memoir by a talented athlete who is street-smart, lonely, and painfully broken … A poetically written account by a resilient rebel who skillfully captures what it is like to feel the world through her skin.
Brenda Barrera, Booklist
[A memoir] with so much power and transparency.
Julia Vitale, Vanity Fair
[T]he book does offer a bold and innovative glimpse into a fascinating mind and the surreal life of a prodigy athlete … Legler is a writer of obvious talent. There are images and turns of phrase that are truly lovely, and that remind us of her keen observational powers … Legler’s story and poetics can be powerful.
Emma Rault, Lambda Literary
Raw and poetic … The book is lean and ferocious — not unlike Ms. Legler’s attributes as a competitive swimmer — and offers an unflinching account of the “dogged devotion to routine and repetition” required of Olympians.
Alex Hawgood, The New York Times
A tale of an unusual and distressing girlhood marred by drug addiction, self-loathing, sexual abuse, rebellion, and intense loneliness amid sporting success. It is short and unorthodoxly prose-like, and it punches hard and dark.
Rachel Olding, Sydney Morning Herald
[A]n intense memoir ... Legler succinctly captures her descent into alcohol and drug addiction ... The raw effect of the prose lingers ... This is a raw story of teenage addiction, and it’s beautifully told.
Publishers Weekly
Helen MacDonald, author of H is for Hawk
Godspeed is a memoir for our times — an urgent, hypnotizing account of growing up and growing into ones skin under extreme circumstances. As brutal and original a telling as I can remember — of loneliness, of coping until the centre cannot hold. There is darkness here but in Casey Legler’s deft hands it serves the light. A cut-to-the-bone blues song in chapter form, these pages are touched, as she is, with lightning.
Michael Stipe
Exceptionally talented, reckless, separated from a true sense of herself, Legler could so easily have not survived her early life. The tension here is in how close she comes — by choice, or by default, in settings both elegant and ruined — and is still able to restore herself, her soul, and renew language itself to tell of it. Many of us would be well served by reading the last sentence of this memoir every day.
Amy Hempel
A coming-of-age drama captured through poetic prose and convincing honesty.
Kirkus
This is a heart-wrenching, coming-of-age memoir by a talented athlete who is street-smart, lonely, and painfully broken … A poetically written account by a resilient rebel who skillfully captures what it is like to feel the world through her skin.
Brenda Barrera, Booklist
[A memoir] with so much power and transparency.
Julia Vitale, Vanity Fair
[T]he book does offer a bold and innovative glimpse into a fascinating mind and the surreal life of a prodigy athlete … Legler is a writer of obvious talent. There are images and turns of phrase that are truly lovely, and that remind us of her keen observational powers … Legler’s story and poetics can be powerful.
Emma Rault, Lambda Literary
Raw and poetic … The book is lean and ferocious — not unlike Ms. Legler’s attributes as a competitive swimmer — and offers an unflinching account of the “dogged devotion to routine and repetition” required of Olympians.
Alex Hawgood, The New York Times
A tale of an unusual and distressing girlhood marred by drug addiction, self-loathing, sexual abuse, rebellion, and intense loneliness amid sporting success. It is short and unorthodoxly prose-like, and it punches hard and dark.
Rachel Olding, Sydney Morning Herald
[A]n intense memoir ... Legler succinctly captures her descent into alcohol and drug addiction ... The raw effect of the prose lingers ... This is a raw story of teenage addiction, and it’s beautifully told.
Publishers Weekly