The Crane Wife

Sometimes a viral essay is just a viral essay. Other times, as with Hauser's story of breaking off her engagement (written for The Paris Review), a piece that spoke to millions will lead to something bigger - in this case, an absorbing memoir in essays

New York Times Book Review, Editors' Pick

Outstanding . . . An elegant masterpiece . . . Wry but also warm and generous

Roxane Gay

Bold and brilliant and psychologically exquisite, CJ Hauser is a deeply gifted and generous writer. THE CRANE WIFE is enthralling

Charlotte Fox Weber, author of WHAT WE WANT

Brilliant and beautiful . . . An absolute must-read

Frances Cha, author of IF I HAD YOUR FACE

A deeply personal and vivacious memoir . . . eye-wateringly funny . . . [and] intensely introspective as she focuses on what she is looking for and what she feels is missing

Irish Examiner

Funny and tender

Sun

Hauser is refreshingly candid and self-aware. They're unafraid to get into the hard stuff-and it's that vulnerability that makes their writing so accessible. Simultaneously clever, heartfelt, and wrenching, The Crane Wife underlines the messy relationship we all have with love

TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2022

After reading this memoir-in-essays by the warm, wise, wry, and wonderful CJ Hauser, author of the viral Paris Review essay "The Crane Wife," you'll have to go fix your face. Were you crying laughing or just crying? Both? Splash some cold water on your cheeks. That's it. Now, go forth in peace with a new understanding of what it means to live and love

Garden & Gun, Best Southern Books of 2022

Thoughtful and fitfully funny . . . Across 17 confessional essays, we find [CJ] furtively spreading her grandparents' ashes at their old house in Martha's Vineyard, contemplating breast reduction surgery and reflecting on her relationships with a high-school boyfriend and a divorcee who is clearly still in love with his ex

Guardian, Best Memoirs of 2022

Stunning and interrogative. . . Brilliant. . . Calling Hauser 'honest' and 'vulnerable' feels inadequate. She embraces and even celebrates her flaws, and she revels in being a provocateur. . . Much has been written on the themes Hauser excavates here, yet her perspective is singular, startlingly so. Many narratives still position finding the perfect match as a measure of whether we've led successful lives. The Crane Wife dispenses with that. For that reason, Hauser's worldview feels fresh and even radical

Oprah Daily

Intimate, all-too-relatable magic. Hauser writes like she's whispering hard-earned secrets to a friend, picking apart how she has been held hostage to her own fantasies about love and happiness in warm and vulnerable scenes. . . What a gift it is, to have the curtains lift and let us all in

Electric Lit

As Hauser grapples with the changing shape of her life story, it's fitting that the shape of each essay and, indeed, the shape of the collection itself, are self-consciously experimental in form. . . Reading The Crane Wife is a bit like following Hauser into the Mirror Maze, her voice as narrator guiding the way through and out. Whether writing about familial or cultural stories, each text becomes a mirror in which Hauser sees herself reflected back. And in her willingness to turn inward, to truly face herself, Hauser's essays open outward, becoming themselves mirrors into which readers might gaze

Ploughshares

I absolutely LOVED these essays. I knew I ought to ration myself to one a day in order to prolong the joy and fascination of them, but I just couldn't: I had to carry on reading and reading, like eating a whole packet of jelly babies in one sitting. What a fantastic, original, funny and touching voice! C J Hauser is a wondrous writer. This book will give so much happiness

Cressida Connolly, author of AFTER THE PARTY

Compassionate and funny and brave. The book is a masterclass in life writing, and a lesson in how to live a life outside the narratives that would contain us. CJ is a master story weaver. I was left wanting more, in the best way possible

Charlie Gilmour, author of Featherhood

Bold and brilliant and psychologically exquisite, CJ Hauser is a deeply gifted and generous writer. THE CRANE WIFE is enthralling.

Charlotte Fox Weber, author of WHAT WE WANT

In The Crane Wife, Hauser undertakes a new way for her to tell stories from her life, playing with history and personal history, exploring the possible hidden truths in her family's past and her own. The result is like interconnected short stories but about her life, the person she is and was, maybe even the person she never knew herself to be. Funny, exciting, vulnerable - truly visionary.

Alexander Chee, author of QUEEN OF THE NIGHT and HOW TO WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL

The Crane Wife more than delivers on the immense promise of the viral essay that served as its source. My goodness is it funny, but also so devastatingly honest and bracing. Reading it is like taking a long road trip with your wisest, sharpest friend and talking the entire way.

R. Eric Thomas, bestselling author of Here For It

The Crane Wife is brilliant and beautiful - the vulnerability of her viral essay is expanded to include immense humour, pondering and further misadventures of the heart. An absolute must-read. I will be gifting this book all year long

Frances Cha, internationally bestselling author of IF I HAD YOUR FACE

In this perceptive and probing work, Hauser brilliantly parses the myths that shaped her understanding of love. . . Sparkling. . . A thrillingly original deconstruction of desire and its many configurations

Publishers Weekly, starred review

Hauser is a delightful and agile writer, capable of speaking in multiple registers, but what all of her essays have in common is honesty, wisdom, a certain loopiness-she's an old soul with a fresh perspective and an energetic, wandering mind. The result is an imaginative and beautiful memoir, one that'll be passed through the secret sisterhood of crane wives for years.

Jennifer Senior

Readers looking for something a little different in a memoir will not be disappointed. The strongest essays exemplify Hauser's keen awareness about life so far: things don't always work out as planned, love is complicated, and trusting your gut is, sometimes, the best option.

Library Journal

Perceptive and witty

Shelf Awareness

Intimate, witty and beautifully crafted

Elle

Outstanding... An elegant masterpiece... Wry but also warm and generous

Roxane Gay

"I am a kind of breakup pro," Hauser writes late in this lively, thoughtful, and often funny set of personal essays-at a point when the reader has learned much about how unlucky in love she's been. . . Hauser makes a welcome effort to talk about both love and culture in unconventional ways. . . A smart, inviting, and candid clutch of self-assessments

Kirkus Reviews

A staccato, funny, barbed, metaphor-laced, and thought-provoking memoir-in-essays. . . No matter her focus, Hauser's deductions about human nature are always arresting, delving, fresh, and exhilarating

Booklist

While it's always difficult to summarize an essay collection, what holds The Crane Wife together is Hauser's unpacking of emotional truths: who do we love, and why, and what happens when they're gone? When we're alone? When we forget what it was like to love them?

LitHub

Smart, poignant stories...all threaded with snort-out-loud wisdom

Grazia

If you ever ask yourself why you fell for, left, stayed too long, chose badly, questioned your instinct, then this blazingly clever memoir will be a revelation...this is a near-genius look at the search for love

Sainsbury's Magazine

After reading this forthcoming memoir-in-essays by the warm, wise, wry, and wonderful CJ Hauser, you'll have to go fix your face. Were you crying laughing or just crying? Both? Splash some cold water on your cheeks. That's it. Now, go forth in peace with a new understanding of what it means to live and love

Garden & Gun

Hauser considers love in all its forms and how it shows up in families - both biological and logical - friendship, queerness and in fleeting moments between strangers. The Crane Wife will make you think, laugh, cry and keep turning the pages

Red

Unsparingly honest

Woman & Home

A frank exploration of intimacy and romance that doesn't always lead to a 'happily ever after'. . . Hauser is a playful, energetic and always likeable writer. . . I kept thinking about all of the people in my life into whose hands I can't wait to put The Crane Wife.

Washington Post

The Crane Wife explores love's many forms with frank, raw honesty, charting an artful path through one woman's experiences. . . Hauser's wry, introspective investigation of her assumptions about love will likely free readers to examine their own personal narratives as well. . . Hauser excavates her past loves and losses, thoughtfully examines them and declares the pain of love to be worth the risk

BookPage

The Crane Wife is brilliantly idiosyncratic. It's funny, beautiful and strange, full of seemingly random collections of cultural references and stories from Hauser's past - things that seem like they won't make sense together, until they do. The collection, written in Hauser's very immediate voice, traverses broad subject matter, including family, breakups, fertility and home ownership.

Independent

The Crane Wife is both universal and exciting. Hauser builds her life's inventory out of deconstructed personal narratives, resulting in a reading experience that's rich like a complicated dessert - not for wolfing down but for savouring in small bites. . . A delightfully wide assortment of literary and cultural digressions enrich Hauser's musings, making her book a lot of fun in a brainy, melancholic way. . . An intellectually vigorous and emotionally resonant account of how a self gets created over time, The Crane Wife will satisfy and inspire anyone who has ever asked, 'How did I get here, and what happens now?'

New York Times Book Review

CJ Hauser understands that there are so many different ways to love and live, and her words make all of them exciting possibilities

Natasha Lunn, bestselling author of CONVERSATIONS ON LOVE

Frank, funny, enthralling... Think of it as rehab for road-weary romantics, inviting us to redefine what constitutes a love story

Observer

Hauser takes the reader along on a soulful journey of self-discovery as she brings together smart, astute observations on modern love and life. . . The essays in this volume offer a fascinating blend of relationships and breakups, colorful family stories, and cultural and literary influences. In fluid prose, she pursues more fulfilling ways to find happiness. . . What a pleasure it is be in the company of this writer. With clear eyes and an open heart, she finds her way and discovers that unmasking mistakes and vulnerabilities is one way of being strong

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Brimming with insight and compassion, this is ideal for anyone looking to embrace the unexpected

Woman's Own

Intimate, wry, compassionate, filled with imaginative connections drawn between art and life. Reading it feels like talking to an unusually articulate and well-read friend... Hauser has a gift for spinning stories from her life and unpretentiously interpreting them through the prism of art. She has written a book that proves her viral success was no flash in the pan, a book you want to press into friends' hands. Invigorating, vulnerable, generous, it is a liberation

Irish Mail on Sunday

Wise, funny and oh so true about dating

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