Reviewed by Vicki Mayk

Among the finest nonfiction writing reveals the common whereas telling a private story. In Nicole Graev Lipson’s exceptional debut assortment, Moms and Different Fictional Characters: A Memoir In Essays (Chronicle Prism, 2025), the author brilliantly mines tales from her personal life to disclose the reality, ache, and wonder that mark the experiences all girls share of their roles as wives/companions, lovers, moms, and buddies.

Every of the 12 essays is a jewel, skillfully written with intelligence and candor. With so many high quality decisions, it’s tough to select a favourite amongst them. Utilizing a vivid orange highlighter to mark favourite passages as I made my method by means of the guide, its pages have been quickly illuminated with many neon streaks. Studying with my author’s eye, I discovered the guide was a masterclass within the artwork of the essay.

It’s particularly noteworthy to see how flawlessly Lipson braids the assorted narrative threads in her work. An indicator in a number of of those essays is her use of favourite literary works as methods to light up her personal life. Within the guide’s opening essay, “Kate Chopin, My Mom, and Me,” the author revisits Chopin’s The Awakening, a landmark work of feminist literature. She attracts parallels between a narrative in Chopin’s guide about marital infidelity and her mom’s extramarital affair, which upended Lipson’s household of origin.

Lipson had first learn Chopin’s guide in her freshman 12 months of faculty — the identical 12 months her mom’s infidelity got here to mild. A 3rd thread in regards to the grownup Lipson’s attraction to a different pupil in a writing workshop gives a revelatory second about her mom’s affair that involves her later throughout her daughter’s birthday celebration: I’m startled by how simple it could abe to maneuver my hand one inch farther, setting every little thing that issues to me on hearth.

Maybe the essay I most admire is “As They Like It.” It stands out, not only for Lipson’s participating prose however for the perception and sensitivity she brings to a subject now a part of societal debate. The creator leverages a literary basic — Shakespeare’s As You Like It–to look at gender identification and gender roles. Rosalind, the play’s main character, spends a lot of the play masquerading as a boy. The essay is organized into Acts, like a play. It begins with Lipson’s recollection of enthusiastically educating As You Like It in a highschool English class, writing, “However my true aim — the aim that retains me awake at evening tinkering with lesson plans, the aim that makes me really feel the work I’ve chosen issues — is to make use of the play to persuade these future custodians of the world they need to all be feminists.”

The stunning response of one in every of her male college students, whose lack of ability to finish a homework project to put in writing as a member of the other intercourse reveals his personal struggles with gender identification, permits Lipson to segue into writing about her oldest daughter’s early identification as nonbinary. The essay strikes seamlessly out and in of concerns of Shakespeare’s heroine, revisiting common tradition tales of women masquerading as males (assume Disney’s Mulan), and recollections of her personal questioning as her daughter usually eschews all issues historically female. Lipson thoughtfully and respectfully considers the altering nature of gender, providing no pat conclusions. As a substitute, she muses, “Perhaps, on this method, my story isn’t a brand new story, although its particulars are specific to our period. Perhaps it’s the story shared by dad and mom in every single place, for time immemorial, who’ve needed to settle for, as their kids develop, that they don’t seem to be them.”

The gathering contains items exploring girls’s physique picture and wonder requirements, feminine friendship, and the acceptance of getting older that transforms us into what Lipson calls “the smart girl, the crone, the nice mom.” Every is a fantastically written reflection on matters that ladies face of their lifetimes. The themes of parenting and what it means to be a mom floor many times, even amongst essays primarily centered on different topics.  Though my years of parenting younger kids are long gone, the items centered on motherhood nonetheless discovered me saying, “Sure!” as I learn of Lipson’s experiences, so relatable to my very own. Like the remainder of her work, these usually are not clichéd examinations of the maternal position, however contemporary insights in regards to the challenges present in being a mom.

Of the essays centered on motherhood, maybe my favourite is “A Place, Or A State of Affairs,” which examines what Lipson dubs “maternal solitude deficit.” In a twist on Virginia Woolf’s admonition that ladies want a room of their very own, Lipson takes it a step additional, arguing that moms have to spend time alone. She ruminates that alone time is so uncommon, moms have a tendency to grab it in no matter method they will: “I’ve discovered solace as a mom within the comfortable narcotic mild of a dentist’s chair and in a curtained nook of Beth Israel Hospital’s emergency room after smacking my head—whereas racing to scrub up after a slime-making challenge—on the underside of our granite counter.” Her best perception in regards to the want for alone time comes from her youngest daughter, who asks, “Generally I wish to play alone, Mama….Can I play alone?” This second prompts one other of Lipson’s unforgettable traces: “It’s arduous to offer to your kids what you haven’t been capable of give to your self. This, too, dawns on me.”

It was a line I got here again to as I completed this guide. Though as girls we could not all the time be capable to give ourselves the solitude, time, and care we’d like, we can provide ourselves the present of a high quality author’s phrases, whispering in our ear the form of tales we have to hear. Nicole Graev Lipson’s Moms and Different Fictional Characters is such a present.