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“Writing is a way of making sense of the world, a way of processing—of possessing—thought and emotion, a way of making something worthwhile out of pain,” writes Irish academic Emilie Pine in Notes to Self, her debut collection of essays that is bold in its articulation of pain and its willingness to embrace all of its complexities.
Pine’s disarmingly simple prose offers a raw, unflinching, and often tender account of her life story. Organised thematically rather than chronologically, the essays map the pain-staking and fluctuating processes by which she has come to a sense of understanding and acceptance. Her first essay, ‘Notes on Intemperance’, which charts her fraught relationship with her father and his alcoholism, is frank and candid in its tone, encapsulated aptly in the opening sentence, “[B]y the time we find him, he has been lying in a small pool of his own shit for several hours.” Strikingly devoid of self-pity and unapologetic in exploring her anger, grief, frustration and insecurity, Pine begins as she means to continue, no longer willing to shrink and silence herself and her experiences.
The collection continues with a heart-wrenching account of her struggles with infertility and miscarriage in ‘From the Baby Years’ and brings a particularly Irish perspective to the issue of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy prior to the referendum and the dehumanising effects of the eighth amendment. The issue of bodily autonomy and self-esteem becomes a recurrent theme in the essays as Pine uses personal anecdotes to provide a broader commentary on problems such as body-shaming and period-shaming. She is refreshing in her honest account of the difficulties involved in applying body positivity and feminist ideals in a society that profits from women’s self-doubt. Indeed, Pine’s willingness to tease out the nuances of her feminist credentials as well as coming to terms with past experiences of sexual violence highlights the timeliness of this collection in the wake of movements such as Times Up and #MeToo, and reiterates the power of women’s voices to resonate deeply with others.
While Pine confesses to only giving the reader access to the “bad bits” of her life story, the collection is at times humorous in its frankness, showcasing the absurdity involved in even the most bleak of situations as well as the evident joy of catharsis in acknowledging the fear of allowing yourself to be vulnerable but doing it anyway.
This review previously featured in our print edition, available now across campus and in select locations across Dublin.
