Make It Scream, Make It Burn, Leslie Jamison
Make It Scream, Make It Burn, Leslie Jamison
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Make It Scream, Make It Burn
Essays

Author: Leslie Jamison

Narrator: Leslie Jamison

Unabridged: 9 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/24/2019

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

From the "astounding" (Entertainment Weekly), "spectacularly evocative" (The Atlantic), and "brilliant" (Los Angeles Times) author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes a return to the essay form in this expansive book.

With the virtuosic synthesis of memoir, criticism, and journalism for which Leslie Jamison has been so widely acclaimed, the fourteen essays in Make It Scream, Make It Burn explore the oceanic depths of longing and the reverberations of obsession.

Among Jamison's subjects are 52 Blue, deemed "the loneliest whale in the world"; the eerie past-life memories of children; the devoted citizens of an online world called Second Life; the haunted landscape of the Sri Lankan Civil War; and an entire museum dedicated to the relics of broken relationships. Jamison follows these examinations to more personal reckonings -- with elusive men and ruptured romances, with marriage and maternity -- in essays about eloping in Las Vegas, becoming a stepmother, and giving birth.

Often compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, and widely considered one of the defining voices of her generation, Jamison interrogates her own life with the same nuance and rigor she brings to her subjects. The result is a provocative reminder of the joy and sustenance that can be found in the unlikeliest of circumstances.

Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
One of the fall's most anticipated books: Time, Entertainment Weekly, O, Oprah Magazine, Boston Globe, Newsweek, Esquire, Seattle Times, Baltimore Sun, BuzzFeed, BookPage, The Millions, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Lit Hub, Women's Day, AV Club, Nylon, Bustle, Goop, Goodreads, Book Riot, Yahoo! Lifestyle, Pacific Standard, The Week, and Romper.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Thomas on October 09, 2019

I loved Leslie Jamison’s collection The Empathy Exams in 2014 but have struggled to connect with her work since then, including this book. For the first two sections of this essay collection, I felt like, in each essay, Jamison took a very long, drawn-out time to make one pretty solid point. For......more

Goodreads review by Vincent on May 07, 2019

Leslie Jamison is one of the best nonfiction writers of our time. Reading her on the page is exactly what I want always to be doing.......more

Goodreads review by Ginni on June 03, 2019

3.5 Make it Scream, Make it Burn is a collection of loosely-related essays, many about the author's own life, and others about subjects that caught her fancy. For the most part, these are ordinary people and routine situations; Jamison digs for meaning in things that are often overlooked, and I appr......more

Goodreads review by Michael on December 28, 2019

I really loved this collection of essays - some autobiographical, some taking a broader lens and some combining the two approaches. Always thoughtful, curious and intelligent, Jamison writes like a dream and manages to be both powerfully emotional and deeply interesting - the first essay about the b......more

Quotes

"Jamison has emerged as a definitive chronicler of human connection and the beauty of mundanity...With this brilliant new collection that rigorously interrogates the human condition, Leslie Jamisonaffirms why she's the essayist of the moment."—David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly

"Razor-sharp...Leslie Jamison has been hailed as the newborn lovechild of Joan Didion and Susan Sontag. Even for a writer without Jamison's generous helpings of talent and success, it can't be an easy thing to live up to. And yet, she does, and then some...The essays are reported, but also confessional, weaving the realities of disparate others onto Jamison's own experiences to create something rich, human and, at moments, so smart and revealing the reader finds herself gasping."—Samantha Shoech, San Francisco Chronicle

"Intelligent and vibrant...Make It Scream, Make It Burn tackles the all-too-human topic of yearning and its oft-corollary, obsession. Both gurgle beneath the writer's sonorous and captivating prose."—Janet Kinosian, Los Angeles Times

"A dazzling collection about the outer reaches of human connection...Acute in her analysis and nourishing in her observations, Jamison is at the height of her powers here as she investigates what we owe one another."—Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire

"Lovely and evocative...Most of these essays are heavyweight boxers."—New York Times Book Review

"Leslie Jamison's astonishingly formidable, restless intellect has gifted us two monumental works of nonfiction...Here, she turns her exacting eye on subjects such as the loneliest whale in the world and a Croatian museum filled with the effluvia of failed relationships."—O, The Oprah Magazine

"A pleasure to read. We can see Jamison let go of her carefully wrought personal narrative and open herself to the unknown."—Sheila McClear, Washington Post

"Illuminating and ruminative...Jamison is positively brilliant when penetrating a subject and unraveling its layers of meaning...Fans of the author's unique brand of perceptiveness will be delighted."—Publishers Weekly

"Provocative...compassionate, curious and humble...Jamison acknowledges that she has skin in the game, and her wise, urgent writing is stronger for it."—Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Like the glass in a kaleidoscope, Jamison's fine-tuned attention seems capable of refracting whatever subject it touches. When I finally looked up from the page it was with a renewed sense of wonder."—Cornelia Channing, The Paris Review

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