Will and Attention

A LUMINOUS MEMOIR OF ADDICTION, RECOVERY, AND THE DEEP PULL OF RELIGION FROM AN AWARD-WINNING AMERICAN WRITER

'One of the best memoirs of the decade'
Jia Tolentino

'Mesmerizing, invigorating and profound'
Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness

'Staggering . . . the single best book about addiction I have ever read'
Keiran Goddard, author of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning
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In her late thirties, Meghan O'Gieblyn found herself in crisis.

Earlier that year, she had relapsed back into an alcohol addiction she had kicked in her twenties. The year before that, she had been briefly drawn back to the faith she had renounced decades earlier, through a friendship she developed with a Catholic priest.

Both of these events happened in secret, hidden from everyone close to her, and both felt like acts of regression - a return to paths she had walked before.

This fundamentally unsettled her belief that she was a unified self with transparent motives. How is a person to avoid those irrational mistakes that they continually return to, despite knowing they are harmful? Can we truly master our will, or are we always divided selves?

And can we ever satisfy the deep yearning our compulsions speak to?
__________________________

PRAISE FOR WILL AND ATTENTION . . .

'A brilliant portrait of a brilliant person: gentle, melancholy, bracing, and astute' Lorrie Moore

'This is one of the best memoirs of the decade - a cool-water baptism, so bracing I felt transformed' Jia Tolentino, New Yorker culture critic and author of Trick Mirror

'A bracing, beautiful book that reads like a fortifying talk with an intimate companion. Mesmerizing, invigorating, and profound' Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness

'Staggering. This is the single best book about the relationship between faith and addiction I have ever read, which, by definition, makes it the single best book about addiction I have ever read. A prayer to recovery in the deepest sense of the word: the reclamation of something fundamental' Keiran Goddard, author of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

'Will and Attention is a profound act of personal, spiritual, and philosophical inquiry. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time' Chloe Benjamin, author of Under Story

'An elegant and philosophical memoir about addiction whose stakes are no less than what comprises one's will to live, what it means to be good, and the worth of devotion' Melissa Febos, bestselling author of Girlhood and The Dry Season

'Will and Attention had an immediate and profound effect on me. I have not stopped thinking about it since, both as a source of comfort and one of inspiration - it seems to offer both salves at once. I found it astonishing' Lamorna Ash, author of Don't Forget We're Here Forever