Another North

Another North is a paean to the material world—food, clothing, cars, and houses, of course, but also to wastrel beauty that serves no purpose but to catch at the human heart.

The pieces in this collection capture the feeling of being buffeted by great gusts of middle-aged longing. What began as one woman’s quarrel with Buddhism, especially its doctrine of non-attachment, morphs into a larger question: What’s the right way to love a person or a thing? With voluptuous detail and rigorous self-interrogation, Jennifer Brice looks for answers in family lore, personal experience, conversations with friends, and beloved books. The result is a tender, moving, far-reaching—sometimes delightfully funny, sometimes achingly poignant—exploration of the powerful ties that bind us to one another and to the world around us.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“Jennifer Brice’s Another North is a marvel, a master class in how you turn obsession and experience into art. I don’t know of another writer who can write about so many things (death and the perfect T-shirt, Alaska and upstate New York, the life of the mind and the life of the body) so ingeniously, with such vulnerability, humor, and compassion. This is a book of offhand brilliance, one to savor and read slowly, if you can restrain yourself. I couldn’t. Once I started reading, I could not stop until I reached the end. And once I reached the end, I missed it, and so I started reading it all over again.”

—Brock Clarke, author of Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?

“A book full humor, intellect, poetry, and, above all, playfulness of form that makes every piece its own delight to read. Brice flies small planes in Alaska, excavates her own and her family’s romantic mythologies, and, above all, investigates the way we reveal ourselves through the thingy-ness of life: coveted mink coats, daffodils marched across a muddy field, a child’s broken eyeglasses, a Tiffany diamond, a bridge deck, and a whole house. In Brice’s hands the objects that make up the structures and detritus of a life become potent talismans that transport the reader into characters’ desires and fears and eras. There is family drama, love, sex, work, motherhood, adventure, and female friendship in these pages—all stitched together with Brice’s quick, self-deprecating wit, elegance of form, and above all, desire to make meaning from all parts of life through story as she creates a complex portrait of the person she is and once was and the person she has sometimes wished to be. You will disappear into these pages—they are a gift and a pleasure.”

—CJ Hauser, author of The Crane Wife

“Jennifer Brice’s wry, knowing, and elegant essays are shaped by recursive, elliptical arcs that are always moving and generous while also being rigorous in their pursuit of her ‘fugitive truths.’ Brice is a wonderful writer, and I loved reading her precise and intimate depiction of what one can see from the complicated vantage of middle age.”

—Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward