Her Beehive Heart: On Leslie Jamison’s “Splinters”

IN THE CORNER of the internet dedicated to the arcana of MTV’s Teen Mom franchise, the “good edit” is a topic of frequent debate. Whose footage is cut and arranged in an arc towards redemption, whose towards failure? In her new memoir Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story , Leslie Jamison exhibits a similar concern for the good edit. How will her efforts towards wholeness appear to the people she loves or has loved? Even after her child’s father spits at her—“Why don’t you eat something, you anorexic bitch”—in front of their baby during a custody handoff, Jamison fears she has done irreparable harm by divorcing him. When they were first together, she tells us, “part of me thought that making this man happy would be more meaningful than anything else I’d ever done.” Splinters narrates the author’s rigorous transformation from maiden to mother. Jamison recounts the birth of her daughter, the dissolution of her marriage, and the early days of single parenthood; the result is a cunningly written story about the sacred, sometimes tedious capacity of small children to ensnare time. Reflecting on past familial and romantic relationships, Jamison concludes that “[w]e aren’t loved in the ways we choose. We are loved in the ways we are loved.” It’s a half-answer to the question that wholly preoccupies her: is she allowed to want what she wants, even if the pursuit of those desires hurts other people? Jamison’s book-length tussle with this question, set down in vivid prose that not only is unafraid of self-incrimination but also seems, actively, to seek it, treats us to a gloriously noisome record of rehabilitation and discovery. On that note, The New Yorker did Jamison a disservice by removing the “loud wet farting” and “sudden and vegetal” smell of her infant daughter’s shit from the excerpt published in the magazine. It’s in the frequent interruption of shit—and vomit, and profanity, and the outrageous self-centeredness of the men in whose company Jamison finds herself—that the writer’s loving and dedicated collection of domestic minutiae reveals its […]

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