What Remains Of Elsie Jane - Chelsea Wakelyn

Fiction

Rating: 7.5/10

Our narrator is a hot mess.  And that’s putting it mildly.

After the death of her partner from drug poisoning, Elsie, shattered by pain and grief, is barely functional.  She may in fact be unravelling.  She is feeding her young children snack food for dinner, making poor decisions in her desperate search for a sequel soulmate, and frankly is beginning to smell.

Elsie yanks the reader along her journey of grief in the first year after her loved one’s death, not sugar coating it or oversimplifying it, making it horrifyingly real in ways you can only imagine if you yourself have been there.

As funny as it is poignant, this weird, wonderful, and heartbreaking novel is a reminder that it’s okay to laugh at and in life’s worst moments. Even as Elsie seemingly goes off the rails, you will laugh as much as you cry.

Footnote: I love the following snippet about addiction…this is a sample of the type of insight this book is brimming with.

“Addiction is a plagiarist, the addicted persons brain and personality are slowly overwritten with a new narrative in the same pen.”

Book Pairing(s): The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Lily And The Octopus by Steven Rowley, The Beginners Goodbye by Anne Tyler