The Crane Wife

Author CJ Hauser
Narrator CJ Hauser
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Run Time 9 hours and 3 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Dating, relationships, living together and marriage: advice and issues, Feminism and feminist theory, Literary essays, Memoirs.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Ten days after calling off her wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, she realised she had almost signed up to live somebody else's life.

In this intimate, frank and funny memoir in essays, CJ Hauser lets go of 'how life was supposed to be' and goes looking for more honest ways of living. She kisses internet strangers, officiates a wedding, visits a fertility clinic. She reads Rebecca in the house her new boyfriend shared with his ex-wife and rewinds Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story to ask if you can ever have a fresh start with an old love. She writes about friends and lovers, grief and heartbreak, blood family and chosen family, and asks what more expansive definitions of love might offer us all.

The Crane Wife is a book for anyone whose life doesn't look the way they thought it would; for anyone trying, if sometimes failing, to find joy in the unexpected.

'Outstanding' Roxane Gay

'Funny, exciting, vulnerable - truly visionary' Alexander Chee

'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

'Brilliant and beautiful... An absolute must-read' FRANCES CHA, author of IF I HAD YOUR FACE

'Compassionate and funny and brave. CJ is a master story weaver. I was left wanting more, in the best way possible.' CHARLIE GILMOUR, author of FEATHERHOOD

'A thrillingly original deconstruction of desire and its many configurations' Publishers Weekly

'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

© Christina Joyce Hauser 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

Outstanding . . . An elegant masterpiece . . . Wry but also warm and generous
Roxane Gay
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
Brilliant and beautiful . . . An absolute must-read
Frances Cha, author of IF I HAD YOUR FACE
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
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
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
Funny and tender
Sun
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
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
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

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The Crane Wife

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