Break Up by Joanna Walsh with Division Gamay Noir

Despite the fact that I’m writing these notes sitting in my apartment, unequivocally in a city, I find I’ve been missing them. Cities. The temporary strangeness of visiting: the feeling of haunting more than inhabiting, becoming swept into a particular rhythm where “whichever string you pull leads to a different frayed end.” The desire itself is a particular space: to be alone with the city and my thoughts. To be elsewhere and nowhere at the same time. Break. Up, a novel in essays by Joanna Walsh, meanders from city to city, dwells in places of transit, and progresses without a whole lot of certainty, and yet it’s in no way an aimless novel. Its aim, also its desire, is to hold on. Smart, layered with theory and philosophy, but not at all dependent upon the laws of others. It’s a novel about love, but not likeability. And I like that about it, the freedom to not be likable; to not be concerned at all by the likeability of your desires, or your inability to let them go. While reading