The Crying Book

Heather Christie is a poet who suffers not infrequently from deep, debilitating depression. This memoir is about a huge part of her life which is crying - about big things, such as the suicides of friends and literary acquaintances who she admired and the no reason crying that wracks her from time to time. It includes research about the physiology and psychology of crying, the three types of tears and their chemical make-up, they whys and why nots of crying. She conveys, to a good degree successfully, the helplessness of the type of major depression she suffers from, although more than once I thought, "For heaven's sake, please get off the kitchen floor." That she is willing to be that honest and raw takes a courage I know I do not have. The writing is beautiful; I marked many passages in the book. There is a lot about suicide in this short book, about the damage and confusion it leaves behind, but I'm not sure how it would land with someone who was contemplating suicide. It ends with one of those notifications re: If you are considering suicide, call these numbers. If it were me, I would have sprinkled that invitation throughout the book.

Christle catalogues a journey of tears: it's not chronological or linear. It's a winding path of tears down a once-dry face. But it's not all sad: little moments of quiet joys and discoveries emerge as the writing goes on. Speckled with pictures and scripts, she enters us into a nearly universal experience. Christle writes, "crying is my spare room." She opens the door so we can enter that space and decorate it with our experiences, too.

This is a book unlike any other work of memoir/non-fiction i have ever read. It was impossible to put it down, and my heart feels both wrenched and 10X bigger after reading. A must read for all.

I bought this book on Crying for my Niece but read a few chapters before wrapping it up for her. Loved the stories and humor so I bought myself one too! She loved the book as she is a sensitive person who cries.This book shows there is no shame in crying and it made me think differently about where you cry, why you cry and the importance of crying. The author has a way of drawing you into her short stories on crying. It is beautifully written.

This book is pure magic. Moving, interesting, brave, and beautiful, in an engaging format. I read it in one sitting and plan on reading it again. Highly recommend.

Christle’s deep dive into crying was a page turner for me. She is brave and brilliant and I am thankful.

First, big thanks to the folks over at Catapult for sending me a finished copy of The Crying Book. Accurately described as “a dazzling meditation on tears” and “a symphonic work of nonfiction,” it is a masterpiece.“When I am not in despair I can barely even describe it. It is a trap door in my life. A bridge to nowhere. It is only a metaphor, a line. But one I send my love across.”Have you ever wondered what it’s like to see the world through a poet’s eyes? Heather Christle — who has published four poetry collections — gives us a glimpse. The Crying Book is part memoir, part physical exploration, part societal observation, and 100% emotion.The book began, she says, as the idea to list all the places she had cried. Then she started researching tears more, and she lost a friend to suicide, and her daughter was born, and then years passed and the result is this genius book. It’s written in short snippets of prose, all of them stitched together with care. The feelings and ideas and themes move forward and backward, circle around on themselves, come back to punch you in the gut when you’re least expecting them.It’s the kind of book where you just can’t help but pick up a pencil and start circling passages. I can already tell that I’m going to shove it into the hands of many friends and family members.“Friends keep sending me links to Rose-Lynn Fisher’s photography project ‘The Topography of Tears.’ It’s a series of photographs of dried tears taken through a microscope, the salt crystals forming little emotional terrains. The tears of grief blaze stark and mostly perpendicular, breaking here and there into clusters of curves. Onion tears are a dense and fernlike wallpaper. You could imagine it hanging in the house of a depthless decorator.”This book reaches into your gut and names the parts of yourself that you have been searching for. Doesn’t that sound like the best way to spend 171 pages?

A beautiful book—a fresh meditation on the phenomenon of crying but also something like a letter from a friend just for you that makes you feel less alone.