In Praise of Inadequate Gifts - by Tarn Wilson (Paperback)

About the Book

Winner of the Wandering Aengus Award, Tarn Wilson's In Praise of Inadequate Gifts explores loss and our miraculous, awkward, imperfect renewals.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award, Tarn Wilson's memoir in essays In Praise of Inadequate Gifts explores the varied ways we cope with trauma and loss-and the miraculous, awkward, and imperfect process of renewal.

Wilson explores a wide range of topics: her obsession with teeth, why she doesn't have children, the summer she spent soldering keyboards for Chrysler Le Barons. She traces the effects of her mother's rape, her confusion after her friend's mother is murdered, her own divorce and struggle with anxiety, and her complex grief after the death of her distant father and mentally ill mother.

Wilson considers these difficult experiences with curiosity and gentle humor. Her honesty, empathy, and lack of self-pity make us feel we are sitting down with a trusted friend, inviting us to give voice to our own hard journey. Ultimately, this collection is about the redemptive power of kindness and connection. "Love's gestures are so unassuming, so ordinary, so clumsy, so imperfect - yet, miraculously, they hold something larger than themselves, big enough to press back against the darkness."

Through her experimentation with form, Wilson's multifaceted reflections reveal how we come to understand our stories and the choices we make as we construct the narrative of our lives.

Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic and Desire, calls these essays, "honest, powerful, and necessary."

Brenda Miller, co-author of the popular guide to creative nonfiction Tell It Slant, writes, "Wilson shows us how we can tell stories that matter, even when our hearts have broken."

Renowned essayist Scott Russell Sanders says, "These essays will surely resonate with readers who have faced their own hard questions."

Abigail Thomas, bestselling author of the memoir What Comes Next and How to Like It says, "I fell in love on the very first page. Tarn Wilson is an irresistible writer and her new book is a treasure. Buy it, read it, tell everyone you know."

Review Quotes

In her rich and diverse collection of essays, "In Praise of Inadequate Gifts," Tarn Wilson guides us generously through both traumas and hard-earned joys, holding fast to "that quiet self at my hidden center." Despite a childhood with a depressive mother who could descend into "quicksand darkness," an absent father, the death of both parents within a year, and the dissolution of her own long marriage, Wilson holds on for a "sweeter" life. The gifts she offers her lucky readers are hardly inadequate. Whether her subjects are mountain lions or wisdom teeth or an old laundromat where she discovers "that strange, alternate universe which is grief," her essays remind us that finally it is love that holds our world together, a "love that gives without even the memory of it, like breath."

-Rebecca McClanahan, author of In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays and The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings

In her memoir-in-essays, In Praise of Inadequate Gifts, Tarn Wilson explores the intricacies of grief, the possibility of survival, and the hard lessons we learn from life's accumulating challenges. Told with a clear-eyed sensibility and a belief in the power of redemption, these essays are honest, powerful, and necessary.

-Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire

A good essayist, like a good scientist, proceeds by asking hard questions while refusing to settle for easy answers. In this rich collection, Tarn Wilson pursues a cluster of haunting questions: How can she recover from a chaotic childhood-her parents' divorce, mentally ill mother, neglectful hippie father, abusive stepfather, periodic poverty, frequent uprooting from schools and homes? What brought on her own divorce? Why has she remained childless? Is there an afterlife? How has reading shaped her "moral center"? How has writing eased her grief? Although Wilson draws on her personal history, these essays will surely resonate with readers who have faced their own hard questions.

-Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination

The true gift of Tarn Wilson's In Praise of Inadequate Gifts is this author's compassion-toward herself, her family, her students, and the world. In a voice both companionable and smart, Wilson shows us how we can tell the stories that matter, even when our hearts have broken.

-Brenda Miller, author of An Earlier Life

The opening essay in Tarn Wilson's new collection is called "The History of My Teeth," and I fell in love on the very first page. Tarn Wilson is an irresistible writer, and her new book, In Praise of Inadequate Gifts, is a treasure. Buy it, read it, and tell everyone you know.

-Abigail Thomas, author of What Comes Next and How to Like It