Overview

USA Today Bestseller ""Sensitive, searingly intelligent, and beautifully written."" --Claire Dederer, author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma ""This is--for real--a masterwork, one I will return to over and over."" --Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year In this intimate and riveting memoir, Best American Essayist Nicole Graev Lipson breaks through the ready-made stories of womanhood, rescuing truth from the fiction that infiltrates our lives. What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to be a girl, a woman, a lover, a partner, a daughter, and a mother in a world all too ready to reduce us to stock characters. Whether she's testing the fragile borders of fidelity, embracing the taboo power of female friendship, escaping her family for the solitude of the mountains, grappling with what to do with her frozen embryos, or letting go of the children she imagined for the ones she's raising, Lipson pushes beyond the easy, surface stories we tell about ourselves to brave less certain territory. As Lipson journeys through this thorny terrain, literature becomes her lodestar. Kate Chopin's erotic story ""The Storm"" helps her reckon with the longings stirring below the surface of her marriage. Watching her son absorb the stifling codes of manhood, she finds unlikely parenting inspiration in Philip Roth's most cartoonish overbearing mother. Summoning Gwendolyn Brooks, she asks, Can destroying one's frozen embryos be understood as a maternal act? And accompanied by Shakespeare's gender-bending heroine Rosalind, she seizes on the truest meaning of loving her oldest child. Risky and revealing, nourishing and affirming, rigorous and sexy, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is a shimmering love letter to our forgotten selves--and the ones we're still becoming.

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9781797228563

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Reviews

"""This magnificent debut places Nicole Graev Lipson squarely among the greatest memoirists and thinkers of our day. A work unlike any other, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters somehow articulates and elucidates all my vague, inchoate concerns about contemporary motherhood--or, actually, personhood--while also showing me the world I thought I knew in a completely different, more radiant light. I finished the book transformed. Narrated with warmth, empathy, honesty, humor, urgency, and ferocious intelligence, this is--for real--a masterwork, one I will return to over and over.""--Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year ""The essays in Mothers and Other Fictional Characters are candid, emotionally exacting, and intellectually rigorous. Nicole Graev Lipson is the real thing: a writer whose work furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society and reflects a steady, unflinching gaze at the truth."" --Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game and Little Monsters ""I read Mothers and Other Fictional Characters straight through, savoring every elegant and assured page. Nicole Graev Lipson beautifully, deftly, deftly, compassionately captures the complexity of what it means to be a woman: the ways we inhabit and abandon, invent and re-invent ourselves. And the way she allows for the co-existence of opposing sociopolitical ideas is precisely the kind of dialogue our country desperately needs. This is one of those books I want to buy for every woman I know--especially for my grown daughters, and for my mother."" --Jamie Quatro, author of Fire Sermon and Two-Step Devil ""A lyrical, raw, and beautifully written exploration of the complicated tangle of being a woman, mother, partner, and thinker. Lipson doesn't swoop in with answers. Instead, she walks us through her own life, fortified by the words of other female writers, helping us see that when intellect and feeling come together they can fuel something far larger than the sum of its parts."" --Phyllis Grant, author of Everything Is Under Control ""Nicole Graev Lipson beautifully mines the loaded territory of mothering, daughtering, friending, wifing, aging, and memory, through a complex and compelling lens of her wide-ranging literary influences, wrestling with how we become the people, parents, and lovers we are. ""What kind of witch will I be?"" Lipson asks, as she interrogates gender stereotypes and societal conventions, what it means to be a ""good"" mother, and how to navigate (and devour) a whole life still ahead of her at fortysomething. A profoundly relatable, timely, and urgent read."" --Gina Frangello, author of Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason and A Life in Men ""Can ambiguity be rendered with precision? Can doubt be expressed with the force of belief? Nicole Graev Lipson makes these improbable feats look easy in Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, which probes questions that have haunted women, and the daughters they've raised, for generations. Bringing a fresh feminist voice and a canny yet open-hearted perspective to such issues as infertility, anti-sexist parenting, and the arrival of middle age, Lipson has written the book we've all been wanting, waiting, and needing to read."" --Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast ""Seamlessly blending personal narrative and feminist criticism, Nicole Graev Lipson invokes icons such as Emily Dickinson, Audre Lorde, and Kate Chopin as she tackles what it means to be a woman, mother, and thinker. The ""thinking"" here is key, and if there is a pleasure equal to watching Lipson's brilliant mind at work it is the stunning prose that serves it. Not shy about weighing in on the big topics--body image, the sexism of aging, and the strains and joys of motherhood and marriage, for starters--Lipson is equally at ease narrowing her focus to the intimate revelations of family life. Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is an extraordinary debut, firmly establishing Lipson as a formidable new talent."" --Jerald Walker, National Book Award Finalist and author of How to Make a Slave and Other Essays"

In her debut mem-oir, Moth-ers and Oth-er Fic-tion-al Crea-tures, Nicole Graev Lip-son casts aside the aim of writ-ing a sin-gle, cohe-sive nar-ra-tive. Instead, she has care-ful-ly gath-ered the threads of her many selves -- moth-er, friend, daugh-ter, teacher, lover -- and woven them into an array of tex-tured fabrics....Time and again, life presents a puz-zle. Time and again, the author seeks answers that shift, holo-gram-esque in their shimmering. Graev Lipson's project is to dwell in that shim-mer-ing. Like the many authors (from Emi-ly Dick-en-son to Doris Less-ing) she cites, she isn't inter-est-ed in solv-ing the human con-di-tion. She wants to rev-el in the poet-ry of it, offer-ing wis-dom and per-spec-tive, and express-ing the nuance with-in us all. With the deft-ness of a skill-ful weaver, she has accom-plished this goal tenfold.""--Jewish Book Council ""...searingly intelligent, revealing, and nourishing...""--Totally Booked with Zibby ""Nicole Graev Lipson's debut Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is a collection of twelve tightly crafted essays that blend personal narrative with reflections on history and literature.""--Electric Literature ""Some of the best nonfiction writing reveals the universal while telling a personal story. In Nicole Graev Lipson's remarkable debut collection, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir In Essays (Chronicle Prism, 2025), the writer brilliantly mines stories from her own life to reveal the truth, pain, and beauty that mark the experiences all women share in their roles as wives/partners, lovers, mothers, and friends...such a gift.""--Hippocampus ""Alluring...what truly titillates is Lipson's mind--the intellectual triple axels of her quest to find and free herself from the packaged plots of womanhood...in this dazzling debut, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters sets itself apart from any niche list of motherhood memoirs. Lipson's subject matter may be familiar, but I promise you've read nothing like this before. In one of the book's final essays, Lipson interrogates what it means to be a MILF (and of course also questions her desire to be one). But the essays that comprise this book are cognitively electric, intellectually graceful, and sexy as hell.""--River Teeth ""An emotional, beautiful, and rewarding read. Lipson provides an earnest memoir that all mothers, children, partners, parents, and everyone in between will be able to read and shed light on the relationships that shaped them.""--Debutiful ""All these essays are written with a palpable love for their subjects, no matter how flawed, and a transparency of thinking that is increasingly hard to find.""--Jewish Rhode Island ""Nicole Graev Lipson's sharp, sparkling collection 'Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays' triumphs at its mission: mapping out Lipson's life as a young mother who also fiercely identifies as a writer, woman and questing human....By way of a whopping series of fearless examinations -- in crisp, urgent prose -- 'Mothers' delivers. No pun... a huge palette of focuses (ageism, sexuality, time's relentlessness) that educates, entertains, inspires -- and richly rewards rereading. 'Mothers' is a keeper."" --San Francisco Chronicle ""The recurring theme of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is its eagerness to turn over complicated questions, to address the nuance in these so-called controversial topics, and ultimately to allow mothers to be seen as people, too. Five stars.""--Monica Cardenas for Bad Mothers ""An impressive book debut.... With empathy and grace, Lipson unravels the tangle of 'illusory standards' that weigh on any marriage and any woman's sense of self. Deftly crafted essays likely to resonate with grateful readers.""--Kirkus Reviews, STARRED ""This unforgettable debut forges the sensuality of Miranda July, nuanced complexity of Claire Dederer, and animal energy of Vanessa Chakour into a book that saw me for the woman I am today, while summoning the sensitive but ferocious creature that I can become tomorrow. Buy it for everyone you love.""--Courtney Maum, author of The Year of the Horses ""I read Mothers and Other Fictional Characters straight through, savoring every elegant and assured page. Nicole Graev Lipson beautifully, deftly, deftly, compassionately captures the complexity of what it means to be a woman: the ways we inhabit and abandon, invent and re-invent ourselves. And the way she allows for the co-existence of opposing sociopolitical ideas is precisely the kind of dialogue our country desperately needs. This is one of those books I want to buy for every woman I know--especially for my grown daughters, and for my mother."" --Jamie Quatro, author of Fire Sermon and Two-Step Devil ""Seamlessly blending personal narrative and feminist criticism, Nicole Graev Lipson invokes icons such as Emily Dickinson, Audre Lorde, and Kate Chopin as she tackles what it means to be a woman, mother, and thinker. The ""thinking"" here is key, and if there is a pleasure equal to watching Lipson's brilliant mind at work it is the stunning prose that serves it. Not shy about weighing in on the big topics--body image, the sexism of aging, and the strains and joys of motherhood and marriage, for starters--Lipson is equally at ease narrowing her focus to the intimate revelations of family life. Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is an extraordinary debut, firmly establishing Lipson as a formidable new talent."" --Jerald Walker, National Book Award Finalist and author of How to Make a Slave and Other Essays ""Nicole Graev Lipson's voice is an urgent searchlight, shining across the most complicated parts of existing as a multi-dimensional woman in a binary world. Her pulse is daringly close to the surface, a drumbeat of desire that beautifully unlocks secrets beneath the surface of family life. Lipson's searing curiosity and tenderness mixes the exacting brilliance of Rebecca Solnit and Deborah Levy with the compassion and lush prose of Maggie Smith and Kathryn Schulz. Her essays tumble thoughts like rocks until they shine, exploring the grief of parenting, the devastation of love, and the impossible stakes of wanting. This book cracked me open over and over again, and each essay restitched my heart into something new."" --Kelly McMasters, author of The Leaving Season ""The essays in Mothers and Other Fictional Characters are candid, emotionally exacting, and intellectually rigorous. Nicole Graev Lipson is the real thing: a writer whose work furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society and reflects a steady, unflinching gaze at the truth."" --Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game and Little Monsters ""Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is a guide to 'living our way' closer to empathy, curiosity, and love. Nicole Graev Lipson's roving intellect and fierce prose make me believe in the power of here, the whole day, tomorrow, and all our precious lives ahead of us. Beautiful, big-hearted, brilliant."" --JoAnna Novak, author of Contradiction Days: An Artist on the Verge of Motherhood and DOMESTIREXIA ""Sensitive, searingly intelligent, and beautifully written, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters gives us motherhood in all its real-life and literary complexity. Nicole Graev Lipson has written an unexpectedly moving portrait of the thinker-mother, to use her own good term. I found profound relief and joyful camaraderie in these pages."" --Claire Dederer, author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma ""This magnificent debut places Nicole Graev Lipson squarely among the greatest memoirists and thinkers of our day. A work unlike any other, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters somehow articulates and elucidates all my vague, inchoate concerns about contemporary motherhood--or, actually, personhood--while also showing me the world I thought I knew in a completely different, more radiant light. I finished the book transformed. Narrated with warmth, empathy, honesty, humor, urgency, and ferocious intelligence, this is--for real--a masterwork, one I will return to over and over."" --Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year ""A lyrical, raw, and beautifully written exploration of the complicated tangle of being a woman, mother, partner, and thinker. Lipson doesn't swoop in with answers. Instead, she walks us through her own life, fortified by the words of other female writers, helping us see that when intellect and feeling come together they can fuel something far larger than the sum of its parts."" --Phyllis Grant, author of Everything Is Under Control ""Nicole Graev Lipson beautifully mines the loaded territory of mothering, daughtering, friending, wifing, aging, and memory, through a complex and compelling lens of her wide-ranging literary influences, wrestling with how we become the people, parents, and lovers we are. ""What kind of witch will I be?"" Lipson asks, as she interrogates gender stereotypes and societal conventions, what it means to be a ""good"" mother, and how to navigate (and devour) a whole life still ahead of her at fortysomething. A profoundly relatable, timely, and urgent read."" --Gina Frangello, author of Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason and A Life in Men ""'For whom do we perform sacred motherhood?' Nicole Graev Lipson turns this question upside down and inside out in this frank, thoughtful, deeply felt collection. By owning her desire to embody the maternal ideal, Lipson illuminates its uninhabitable, blood-sucking center."" --Courtney Zoffness, author of Spilt Milk ?""Can ambiguity be rendered with precision? Can doubt be expressed with the force of belief? Nicole Graev Lipson makes these improbable feats look easy in Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, which probes questions that have haunted women, and the daughters they've raised, for generations. Bringing a fresh feminist voice and a canny yet open-hearted perspective to such issues as infertility, anti-sexist parenting, and the arrival of middle age, Lipson has written the book we've all been wanting, waiting, and needing to read."" --Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast

Author Information

Nicole Graev Lipson's writing has appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Millions, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among other venues. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, nominated for a National Magazine Award, and selected for The Best American Essays. She lives outside of Boston with her family.

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