Poser
My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses

Quotes

“Why did Claire Dederer take up yoga? Short answer: for the same kinds of reasons that Elizabeth Gilbert changed her life in Eat, Pray, Love and to much the same funny, charming, self-deprecating, stealthily inspirational, and (quite possibly) bestselling effect…This appealing writer’s first book is long overdue. It’s clear from the start that she will be transformed and find a sensible, spiritual, nonsappy way to become a devotee before Poser is over.” New York Times 

“A fine first memoir, and it’s heartening to see a serious female writer take such a risky step into territory where writers of literary ambition fear to tread, lest they be dismissed as trivial…[What] makes Poser work on a lot of levels is that first in line to ask searching questions and poke fun is the author herself…Poser is a powerful, honest, ruefully funny memoir about one woman’s openhearted reckoning with her demons…In the hands of a gifted writer, the universal is embedded within the personal. Guess what? Your bad wallpaper made for a lovely book.” New York Times Book Review

“Let me be honest about something: I love yoga, I live for yoga, and yoga has changed my life forever—but it is very difficult to find books about yoga that aren’t incredibly annoying. I’m sorry to say it, but yoga sometimes makes people talk like jerks. Thank goodness, then, for Claire Dederer, who has written the book we all need: the long-awaited funny, smart, clear-headed, thoughtful, truthful, and inspiring yoga memoir. To simplify my praise: I absolutely loved this book.” Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Timesbestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love

“Claire Dederer is all these women: a daughter attempting to make sense of an irresistibly nutty divorce; a new mother trying to meet the ridiculously high standards of a peculiarly liberal breed of uber-moms; a wife struggling to salvage intimacy in a marriage slammed by exhaustion, mortgage payments and encroaching in-laws; and a lost soul who stumbles into a yoga studio and finds salvation. Above all, Dederer is a brilliant writer whose prose sparkles and cuts deep. Poser is a book you will want to immediately share with your friends. It’s hilarious, unflinching and bursting with love.” Maria Semple, author of This One Is Mine and producer of Arrested Development

“This funny, spectacularly well-observed, and moving book does what even yoga can’t: it provides solace while making you laugh. I feel three inches taller.” Henry Alford, acclaimed author of How to Live

“As a yoga-culture skeptic, I began this book with a certain dread of encountering breathless, self-righteous platitudes about the spiritual healing powers of yoga, but I was immediately charmed and disarmed by Dederer’s fiercely intelligent, funny, unsentimental voice. This book contains real, hard-won insights; yoga became, for Dederer, a rebellion against goodness, not a path to it. This story of her revolt against perfectionism is a joy to behold and a true inspiration.” Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author of The Great Man

“Poser achieves something rare: It’s a contemporary book about yoga that doesn’t leave you squirming, suspect, or bored…The illusion of commiseration here is really just a triumph of truth telling, of a writer having the courage to confront her limits and sit, uncritically, in the messy present. Like a yoga pose, it doesn’t have to be perfect to be exquisite.” Los Angeles Times

“[Poser has] the gravitational pull of a good novel and an unusually genuine voice that envelops the reader swiftly…Dederer sparkles when introspection is ruthless—the result reads true and funny.” Seattle Times

“This memoir about her decade doing downward dog while raising two kids and trying to keep her marriage alive reads like Eat, Pray, Love for hip but harried moms…Funny, well-observed, and ultimately inspiring.” People

“In any case, Dederer’s book is only tangentially about yoga. It could just as easily have been called ‘How to Be a Perfect Mom, Wife, and Daughter in the Uber-Liberal Confines of the Pacific Northwest.’…Dederer proves an effective storyteller. She knows how to set up a punch line, how to foreshadow a big moment, how to create drama out of the everyday bits of a life. Yoga is the catalyst, the act that repeatedly forces her to look inward.” Cleveland Plain Dealer

Awards

• Amazon Best Book of the Month
• BookPage Top Pick