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"Adrian's writing remains hypnotic on every subject."
Tin House
A young stranger in the audience drew this picture of me during a reading from my memoir. Verso: "Your words make all the difference."
I especially love the 💡 above my head.
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“A remarkable memoir, organized as a glossary of terms, that is part detective story, investigating a mother's mental illness. . . Astonishing and inventive. [Adrian's] glossary is strangely gripping, with a momentum pulling the reader in and through. The result is whimsical, even darkly funny at times, brimming with compassion, terribly sad and deeply loving. . . . Memoir readers should not miss this singular offering.”
—Shelf Awareness
Dear Knausgaard
(literary criticism)
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“Kim Adrian's loving struggle with Knausgaard is the kind of criticism I most enjoy — personal, wonderfully engaged, intense but somehow simultaneously light-footed, and extremely intelligent. . . . A delight from start to finish.”
—James Wood, literary critic for The New Yorker
Sock
(cultural criticism)
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“An utterly engaging investigation — not so much of [the sock], per se, as of human evolution, anatomy, physics, sexuality, fashion, painting, consumerism, manufacturing, and motherhood. . . . Illuminating, erudite, deeply intelligent.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
The Shell Game
(edited volume)
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“The Shell Game pushes the boundaries of prose and opens up a whole new world. . . . [It] makes readers feel as if they are learning what an essay is (or could be) all over again.”
—New Pages