The Crying Book

I first encountered Heather Christle’s The Crying Book during a period when I found myself crying a lot in public, at less than ideal times, for reasons that were not easily explained. A colleague, both wise and kind, lent me her copy of The Crying Book. With its ornate cover of celestial tears, The Crying Book announces to the reader that is not going to be an apology for the inappropriateness of tears; rather, it locates episodes of crying and ideas about crying in art, science, and the author’s life as a way of understanding what happens when we cry. Christle employs a poet’s logic to weave together anecdotes of physical and emotional extremis, resulting in a work that is unique, startling, and insightful. Christle writes: “Maybe we cannot know the real reason why we are crying. Maybe we do not cry about, but rather near, or around. Maybe all our explanations are stories constructed after the fact.” Those who have felt their tears to be a burden or a mystery will find solace in the brilliance of this elegant text.