book thoughts: Stray by Stephanie Danler

The backstory: Stephanie Danler's debut novel, Sweetbitter, is one of my all-time favorites.

The basics: Stray is a memoir "of growing up in a family shattered by lies and addiction, and of one woman’s attempts to find a life beyond the limits of her past."

My thoughts: One of the reasons I loved Sweetbitter so much is that it's the rare trifecta of a novel that has a great plot/characters, great writing, and great wisdom. Stray is filled with great writing and great wisdom, but those looking for a traditional memoir may find the book's construction a bit confusing. It's broken into three thematic sections: Mother, Father, and The Monster (the married man with whom she has an affair), but the three characters overlap across all three sections. The vignettes also move across geography and time. Stray is a writer's memoir. I'm grateful I had the time and space to read it in twenty-four (non-consecutive) hours. Many of the vignettes or essays would work well as stand-alone pieces, and ultimately, that's what kept this book from getting an extra star or half-star. There are many moments of brilliance and wisdom in this memoir, but I finished wanting more. The whole memoir isn't greater than the sum of its brilliant parts.

Favorite passages: "Grieving the living feels like an infinite state, until you remember that it ends in regular grieving."

"Every meeting we're trying to reclaim that brief minute we believed love weighed more than timing, geography, or the limits of each other's character."

Rating: 4 out of 5
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: May 19, 2020
Source: publisher

Want to read for yourself? Buy Stray from an independent bookstore or Amazon (Kindle edition.)

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