Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas

What a gorgeous book! As someone who perpetually gripes about memoirists not doing thorough, emotional research, I have to give three cheers to Abigail Thomas. She has taken the mundane stuff of motherhood and marriage and a woman floundering through life and made an object of striking beauty. Her short pieces are tiny windows onto tiny moments that nonetheless illuminate human brokenness and the terrific force of love. I delight in trusting a narrator so completely. I'm also thrilled to now know a woman writer who is masterfully representing a mother's experience without complaint or sentimentality. Her form is refreshing and fun--I read this book in about two hours--but in no way self-consciously artsy, as many lyrical memoirs are. I'm wowed. On to THREE DOG LIFE...