"[A] bold collection . . . The sheer fearlessness of the narrative is captivating." - The New Yorker
"Anyone who's read Febos . . . knows that her work explores boundaries as deftly as it defies categorization. In this new collection of essays, she once again obliterates convention with her erotically charged and intellectually astute recollections of family, relationships and the search for identity." - Esquire.com, “The Best Books of 2017 (So Far)"
"Her mastery over metaphor is astonishing . . . What might be mere navel-gazing for a less brilliant author is made powerfully universal here. Though the particulars are hers, just about anyone can relate to the feeling of a chasm opening up inside. Febos’s awakening to her full identity, even its ugliness, is a powerful and redemptive epic." - starred review, Publishers Weekly
"No subject is off-limits to Febos. She authorizes her reader to be braver, to dig deeper into their own secrets and to research those secrets in history . . . In her close reading and recording of her own life, Febos universalizes the pain of waiting . . . with each new piece Febos bends time." - The Rumpus
"Erotic and dark, the book is a courageous exploration of love as the ultimate form of plenitude and annihilation. A lyrically visceral memoir of love and loss." - Kirkus Reviews
"It’s easy to fall in love with Melissa Febos' gorgeous new memoir of short essays. Febos brings a relentless curiosity and startling intimacy to the page . . . With her careful observations and introspection, she transcends isolation and captures the boundless nature of human emotion. Abandon Me is a fierce exploration of love and obsession, but it is something else as well—the story of woman who is unafraid to explore the harsh truths and choices that shape our lives." - LAMBDA Literary
"Febos's gifts as a writer seemingly increase with the types of subjects and themes that typically falter in the hands of many memoirists . . . Febos transports, but her lyricism is always grounded in the now, in the sweet music of loss." - The Millions
"Searing and eye-opening at every turn . . . a must-read." - The Huffington Post, “27 Nonfiction Books By Women Everyone Should Read This Year”
"Riveting . . . emotionally raw and stirring in a way that will have you aching for more." - Newsweek, "Best New Books of the Week"
"Intimate and mesmerizingly vulnerable, Abandon Me is a boo[k] that gets at the heart of who we love, how we love—and why." - Refinery29, "Best Reads of February"
"Febos has established herself as a gifted writer with deep reserves of empathy and a bottomless hunger for personal truth. . . . Her prose is exciting and inviting because it feels both raw and lived in." - Guernica
"Febos complicates the human desire for connection with explorations in philosophy, psychology, and accounts of historical repression that seduce readers into inhabiting her myths while resisting sentimentality by dismantling the fictions with deft intellectual probing reminiscent of the work of Maggie Nelson. . . . One of Febos's greatest literary strengths is her ability to make these intimate experiences feel universal." - Bomb Magazine
"[In this] collection of self-aware, stylish, autobiographical essays on love, addiction, and inheritance, Febos harnesses language, moods, actions, and settings with precision. A professor of creative writing, she stuns with sentences that are a credit to her craft and will no doubt inspire her readers." - Booklist
"Abandon Me is a beautifully written journey through Febos' world." - Buzzfeed
"Abandon Me proves unequivocally that there must be room in the literary canon for the complexity of women's stories on erotic fixation and loss." - Bitch Magazine
"It's rare to read a book as generous as it is genius. Febos intimately explores addiction, pain, pleasure, the uncontrollable character and the strangely joyful and terrifying nuances of abandonment. I don't know that I've ever felt more thankful to read a book. Abandon Me found me when I most needed it." - Kiese Laymon, author of HOW TO SLOWLY KILL YOURSELF AND OTHERS IN AMERICA
"An intricately constructed and emotionally devastating book about the appearance and disappearance of love. Febos is a strikingly talented writer who pushes at the boundaries of her form and shows us just how amazing and expansive it can be." - Jenny Offill, author of DEPT. OF SPECULATION
2016-12-06
An award-winning nonfiction writer explores the personal roots of a powerful and destructive love/hate relationship she shared with a married lesbian. As a child, Febos (Creative Writing/Monmouth Univ.; Whip Smart, 2010) suffered from separation anxiety and nightmares, and she sleepwalked whenever her sea-captain father was away. When she was awake, she routinely "counted all the dangers my father might meet" and feared that she might be found unlovable enough that he would never return. Febos took solace in erotically charged stories that, as in the 1986 film Labyrinth, merged fantasy and horror. But in her teenage and young-adult years, her escapist tendencies took the forms of sexual obsessions with men and women and a drug addiction. When Febos met Amaia, a beautiful married lesbian who lived on the other side of the country, the attraction was immediate and intense. Amaia wooed her with expensive gifts that reminded her of the gifts her father would bring back to her. She writes, "each object was a promise, something I could hold when I could barely remember her face." Caught in a web of obligation and desire that was as pleasurable as it was disturbing, Febos began a cross-country relationship that, in its secrecy and impossibility, was profoundly erotic. Her lover made Febos feel worshipped; Febos, in turn, found herself idolizing her lover. Yet at the same time, the author also experienced a primal fear of abandonment that came from Amaia's physical, and at times emotional, unavailability. Her understanding of the relationship was heightened by her own coming to terms with the part-Native American, substance-abusing biological father she never knew growing up. With Amaia, she experienced both the paternal genetic legacy of addiction as well as the traumatic "legacy of abandonment, of erasure" that was her birthright as a Native American. Erotic and dark, the book is a courageous exploration of love as the ultimate form of plenitude and annihilation. A lyrically visceral memoir of love and loss.
