This Delicate Life - by Ella Jacobson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A striking memoir in the vein of The Glass Castle and Half a Life, in which a young Alaskan woman must relearn how to live after accidentally killing a cyclist.

When she was sixteen, Ella Jacobson drove through an intersection as a cyclist ran his red light. He died shortly after impact, while she was on the phone with the 911 operator. In those few minutes, her understanding of the world, and what it would allow, fell apart. In exquisite yet unflinching prose, This Delicate Life explores the experience of growing up when every narrative about living in the world--about goodness, about blame, about the moral arc of the universe--is proven wrong. It reckons with the difficulty of living in a world of random chance, where tragedy can happen without intention or reason.

Raised in Alaska, Ella did not grow up expecting the world to be a bloodless place. Her community of Fairbanks, spread across a beautiful and dangerous valley, was marked by drownings and snowmobile accidents, bush plane crashes and hypothermia. From her family too, she learned about legacies of violence and loss. But exposure did not prepare her for the shocking realization that anyone, without intent, can find themselves in the position of taking a life.

There is no word in English for someone who has accidentally killed another person. In a culture that struggles with stories that don't follow the redemptive arc of victim to survivor, or the easy justice of crime and punishment, This Delicate Life demonstrates the necessity of naming, of bearing grief, and of finding something like peace--in remote cabins and gardens, and through friendship--after the unthinkable.

Review Quotes

"This Delicate Life is one of those rare memoirs with real moral stakes on every page. Jacobson does not look away from the pain of living. Everything is connected, the good and the bad, the random and the ordered, and in this way the prose feels vibrantly alive. Self-implication and forgiveness live together in these pages, along with a deeply resonant chronicle of a childhood that tragically ended too soon. It is impossible to forget this story."
--Garrard Conley, New York Times bestselling author of Boy Erased

"A debut of startling intelligence, beauty, and restraint, This Delicate Life is a memoir that both thinks and feels deeply. Ella Jacobson writes with a poet's precision and a philosopher's questioning, refusing the easy narrative of guilt and redemption to examine the aftermath of an accidental collision with a cyclist when she was sixteen. Her memoir is devastating and luminous, and, most importantly, alive with the search for a new language for tragedy and accident."
--Meghan O'Rourke, New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Kingdom

"This crisp, lyrical, unsentimental exploration of an accidental killing announces the arrival of an exciting new talent. Ella Jacobson combines a novelist's descriptive powers with a sharp critical eye."
--Katie Roiphe

About the Author

Ella Jacobson's work has appeared in The Drift, The Guardian, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She holds a master's degree in cultural reporting and criticism from the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, received an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, was the Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer in Nonfiction in 2023, and is currently a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow. Learn more at EllaJacobson.com.