Join us Thurs., May 30, 6 pm as Mary Laura Philpott will be here to discuss her new collection of essays I Miss You When I Blink (Atria Book, hb., 288 pp., $26). The discussion will be moderated by Amanda Heckert from Garden & Gun.
Mary Laura Philpott thought she’d cracked the code: Always be right, and you’ll always be happy.
But once she’d completed her life’s to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies—check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She’d done everything “right,” but she felt all wrong. What’s the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options?
In this memoir-in-essays full of spot-on observations about home, work, and creative life, Mary Laura takes on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood with wit and heart. Like a pep talk from a sister, I Miss You When I Blink is the funny, poignant, and deeply affecting book you’ll want to share with all your friends, as you learn what Mary Laura has figured out along the way: that multiple things can be true of us at once—and that sometimes doing things wrong is the way to do life right.
Mary Laura Philpott’s writing has been featured by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and other publications. She lives in Nashville with her family.
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