Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly

Nicole wrote glowingly about Heating & Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly on her blog and I immediately ordered it from the library, only to have to wait weeks for it to come in. This tiny little book (just over 100 pages! very small! big font! finished in less than two hours!) from 2017 was apparently in HOT DEMAND in my library system.

I am going to pile on what Nicole said about this book. It's delicious. How are some people able to put words to paper that evoke such meaning? Fennelly calls these "micro-memoirs" and some are literally only a sentence long, but they are tiny gems of setting and plot and, as if that's not enough, they are also quite funny.  

One of the blurbs on the back of the book says "What better can one writer say about another writer's work? I wish I'd written it. Heating & Cooling is just that enviable." - Richard Ford and that's exactly how I feel. I wish I could write like this. It was just a fun time and I highly recommend it.

5/5 stars

Lines of note:

MARRIED LOVE
In every book my husband's written, a character named Colin suffers a horrible death. This is because my boyfriend before I met my husband was named Colin. In addition to being named Colin, he was Scottish, and an architect. So you understand my husband's feelings of inadequacy. My husband cannot build a tall building of many stories. He can only build a story, and then push Colin out of it. (page 15)

This is the first micro-memoir and I really feel like it sets the tone.

I COME FROM A LONG LINE OF MODEST ACHIEVERS
I'm fond of recalling how my mother is fond of recalling how my great-grandfather was the very first person to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on the second day. (page 22)

So funny. It tells you so much in just one brief sentence. We should all be so lucky as to have the ability to form words into chains and come up with something so telling, witty, and touching.

It was pleasant by the water's edge. The running sandpipers, with their legs puncturing the silk of the receding surf, reminded me of the jackhammer needle of my mother's sewing machine. (page 43)

This is how extended metaphors should be, right?

Word I looked up:

...when the nurse gessoed the wand ... (page 38) - Gesso is a white paint mixture and to gesso a canvas is to prepare the paste. Since this was the retelling of the author getting and ultrasound, I guess it's just referring to the smearing of the ointment on the wand/belly beforehand.