Unreality of Memory Paperback – August 11, 2020

Rarely have I encountered a piece of literature so thought-provoking as this one. This is not a book to breeze through -- Ms. Gabbert won't allow that. Because she opens doors of the spiritual, sociological, psychological -- even existential -- kind. I found myself pondering the world around and inside me from a new perspective after every single essay. It's challenging to capture the essence of this collection because words don't do it justice. The prose is flawless and deliciously crafted. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

And so real. The parts about caregiver burn out due to the author's real life experience were particularly revealing because it has been a *cascade* of stress going back hundreds of years. Intergenerational stress is the cause of the current levels of autoimmune disorders, addiction and depression, suicide. Oh and of course mass shootings. And how to reverse this ongoing and continuous stream of hopelessness and apathy - we have been worn down. I believe it has been done deliberately, planned and executed beautifully. It has worked. And there may be no way "back" - no way to overcome what we have become. The pandemic is even proving to be "not enough of a wake up call." I still hope that this next administration, IF enough of us can participate in true community based "politics for people," might help, if we are not too exhausted to even participate. I enjoyed the writing style, and the author's honesty about some of the challenges of writing something like this. Thank you.

Gabbert is one of the few essayists I follow closely--her broad interests, openness to drawing discomfiting conclusions, and ambition make her a consistently engaging, often thrilling read. These essays demonstrate all of those strengths and more, and while they do consistently return to certain themes, they also frequently surprise, offering new ways of thinking and seeing. The writing is also extremely accessible, even at its most conceptual. Highly recommended.

Once you open this book, you won’t be able to put it down. I found previously held rationale about events and occurrences upended with thought-provoking alternate paths I’d never given a second glance. How we may have felt about and looked at events through one lens turns into a kaleidoscope of viable choices. Ms. Gabbert is a masterful at broadening horizons. I highly recommend this book and will most certainly be getting her other works.

What a wonderful book! The essays have a fantastic sense of flexibility about structure and genre. They feel comfortable and unconstrained—but also well researched and convincingly argued. From first to last, this book made for excellent company during these very distressing times.

There’s a feeling that you get when you try to think the unthinkable. A nuclear apocalypse. A true planet-wide climate disaster. Earthquakes, tsunamis, meteor strikes . . .We aren’t equipped to comprehend these kinds of things, as real as they could turn out to be.And then there are the personal unthinkable. The sudden loss of a partner. Financial disaster. A fatal medical diagnosis.Those are disasters. And that’s where Gabbert starts her thinking in this book. Although the focus she assigns herself is disaster, there are other kinds of things in the class of the unthinkable. And once you start thinking for yourself, you begin to expand on the general theme of things that are real but so incomprehensible that they seem unreal.Gabbert herself characterizes the category as “seeming unrealness in something I assume to be real.”The book is a collection of essays, each delving into the theme from a different direction. Ruminations, sometimes with opinions or positions, but more often just the rumination itself. Gabbert is a poet, and she has the sensibilities to make these ruminations poignant and expressive.I found the essay on “compassion fatigue” especially poignant in the time of covid, the war in Ukraine, and countless attacks on the rights and dignity of different segments of people throughout the world. We are dulled by the repetition, similar even to the way we have become dulled to the repetition of Donald Trump’s moral transgressions — they just stop registering the way that we know they should.There’s another class of the unthinkable, one not so negative. The origin of the universe. The fate of the universe. Even the kinds of things that happen everyday that we describe as “unbelievable” — a dream job, a dream partner or friendship, a personal success of any sort.Gabbert doesn’t go technical or philosophical on the overall point, but there is something here. Has evolution equipped us with challenges we now meet in the real world, like climate change, or is our inaction related to this sense of unreality she is writing about? Do autocrats like Putin or Trump tap into and take advantage of that seeming inability to comprehend?All in all, I’d rather contemplate the origin of the universe, but it’s the challenges we may be ill-equipped to meet that demand our attention.

The whole experience of reading this book was like having a conversation with a friend - it felt both soothing and interesting and I learned a lot. Gabbert is a really spectacular writer.

Just a freaking fantastic collection of essays that are timely, interesting, terrifying, and beautiful. Definitely the best book I read this year. Highly recommend.