John Braine's Reviews > Notes to Self: Essays

I can't do justice to such a finely written book with my comparably basic grasp of English. I adore books like this; it's a raw, honest and insightful look inwards and outwards in the face of life's many knocks. And so beautifully written. Not beautiful as in beautifully crafted florid prose, but beautiful in the truth and feeling conveyed over the course of each essay, each one adding a layer to the previous ones. In some ways, this reminded me of one of my favourites books in the last decade; H is for Hawk. I think Notes To Self was extra special for me because I could relate to quite a lot of the touchpoints; I came out the other end of the rave scene in quite a fragile state and spent most of my early twenties struggling with serious mental health issues and then over a very slow period of growth, I miraculously found myself with a Master's degree, a career and a family a decade later, then I ended up looking after a parent with many health issues and family conflict, while we went through the heartache of multiple miscarriages and infertility. So quite a lot of this touched a nerve and was expressed with such stunning craft that I just wanted to open my window upstairs, like some broken adult version of the Never Ending Story and point at Notes to Self shouting THIS! THIS! This is what it's all about.