Mary Laura Philpott

Stated to be a Memoir in Essays this reads as a love story to family. Every word, every thought is infused with caring. Philpott is such an extraordinary writer that you can’t help but feel the pain, the anxiety, the fear and when you want to curl up in a ball and mourn the loss of security she gently brings you back down to reality and the fight to find normalcy in the insanity. She holds your hand and tickles you while you try to hold in the laughter as you experience a moment of show more hilarity, just a moment, fleeting and then back to running through stingrays.

There are so many wonderful, uplifting, heartbreaking stories on the pages in this book I was just gobsmacked. Turtles, Turtles, Turtles - we had one that came around every year and we looked for him and we named him, and he marked our seasons, our years, our memories - and I had forgotten until I read about Frank the box turtle. What a wonderful story - so relatable - told with just the right amount of levity amidst the chaos while looking for the truth.

Philpott has discovered so many truths and fictions and discusses them in calm prose explaining the inevitable failure we all face when we have to choose one over the other. Wow, this is hard lesson to learn and admit that you may have to sacrifice one to save one. She does it with such heartbreaking clarity you nod and accept that it was inevitable. Powerful thoughts, emotions and writing.

How do you mourn the passage of time — the letting go - the milestones that have passed as we looked away at something else- that we will never experience again. It happened - you missed it - oh well - now what? We all thought we had more time. Philpott spends pages on this and I kept shaking my head in acknowledgment as she nails each point, each event and invites you to “come stand quietly by the fruit” with her. It is all in the chapter “The Great Fortune of Ordinary Sadness”

While “Bomb Shelter” may not be the uplifting, Ha Ha, memoir that some readers are looking for, it is a beautiful, meaningful piece of writing that had tremendous staying power. It makes perfect sense for an author who admits to trying to make sense of her life “by stacking stories upon stories”. I am unsure whether this qualifies as sense but it made for great reading.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for a copy. show less

“Are John and I really on our fourth dog together?” I had to laugh. And shudder. I have been with my husband long enough to have had six dogs–and a rabbit. Again and again, Mary Laura Philpott had me laughing and shuddering in recognition.

Phlipott writes about being alive, the wonder and dread of being a mother, the joy of life and the recognition of one’s mortality. It’s a hard world. Is it even safe to send our children out into it? We can’t protect them. And we look into the show more mirror and see our own aging. “I am obsessed with death because I am in love with life,” Philpott writes; “I grieve in advance of loss.”

This struck too close to home. I am looking at 70 in a few months. I have already lived longer than my mother, her twin brothers, my grandfathers, my great-grandparents, and a cousin. I have to live forever, to be there for our son. How do I use the years that are left? We can’t save everyone, Philpott writes, but we can shelter each other in love. It’s the only bomb shelter we have.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

Mary Laura Philpott weighs in on a variety of subjects in her engaging and entertaining collection of essays, "I Miss You When I Blink." The title is a sentence that Philpott's six-year-old son said to himself one day. She realized he had inadvertently captured an attitude that she had about herself, and his words became her mantra, like "certain phrases handy in our minds—hanging on hooks just inside the door."

The author, who is married with two children, is a cartoonist and freelance show more writer who, she reveals, has sometimes felt like an underachiever whom the world had passed by. She describes herself as a type A personality who is "addicted to getting things right," and declares, "I hate that I can't relax." Whatever happened to that ambitious college student who looked forward to fulfilling herself professionally? The answer is that she was there all along, waiting to be acknowledged. Mary Laura's comments reflect her self-deprecating honesty, humor, and insight into human nature. We can identify with this down-to-earth and witty individual who chats with ease on such topics as parenthood, perfectionism, volunteerism, and even the perfect murder weapon. Her appealing prose style ranges from breezy to biting, and she lucidly and succinctly puts her finger on issues that women often think about but do not always choose to air in public.

Philpott is embarrassed to admit that she became depressed at a time when she had much to celebrate: a nurturing family, nice home, and good physical health. Unfortunately, she was "staggering under the weight of a dull, constant dread" in spite of having "the luck and support that should have made [her] feel safe and happy and secure." She wisely sought the help of a therapist and eventually found her voice. This book makes us laugh out loud and also reminds us that it not necessary to excel at everything one undertakes. The cliché holds true: the things that we take for granted are often the most significant of all. If only we were all blessed with the wisdom, presence of mind, and perspective to see not just the trees, but the forest as well. show less

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for an advanced readers copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Another so-relatable-I-can't-breathe essay collection from Philpott, my favorite lovable southern neurotic. She worries about all of the same things I worry about. We both have family members with neurological and immunological disorders. If authors like Philpott and Anne Lamott were not so brutally honest and helped me face up to, and laugh about, the hardness of just plain living in the show more world, I don't know how I would cope.

The meditation chapter alone is worth the price of the book. I was hooting with laughter—and recognition. The bizarre places where an anxious person's mind darts every few seconds would defy the imagination of the mellower members of the human race.

Also, how about "is this COVID? This feels like COVID" mental breakdowns (In the author's case it actually WAS the virus, and weeks before anyone was acknowledging that it had ever left China). Many people have attempted to write pandemic/lockdown books. This is mine. If I ever want to look back on this hellish time, this is the book I'll use as a reference. Because it is a book by a "worrywort," as we say in the South, but this essay collection is also a book of profound comfort, like a splash of a little something alcoholic in your iced tea. show less