Praise and Reviews
Praise for A Dynamic God
"For those struggling with contradictions between organized religion and their personal beliefs, this testament to living an intimately unique brand of Catholicism will be welcome reading … the more spiritually minded will find food for thought and much to embrace in these thought-provoking pages."
—Margaret Flanagan, Booklist
"Stunning collection … A Dynamic God owes its power to Mairs' sensitivity, her attention to detail, her honesty about herself."
—David Ulin, LA Times
"Mairs is an extraordinary woman … Her self-deprecating humor is wonderful-much like the writing of Anne Lamott, although Mairs manages to create her own style."
—Publishers Weekly
"Early in the book, the author states that her intent is to throw wide the door for the Holy One to enter. She has done that and much more."
—Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
"Her book is an eloquent and witty account of a spiritual quest to find the holy within and without."
—Tucson Weekly
"A Dynamic God is rich, risky, and startling. It is a remarkable book. Read it."
—Story Circle Book Reviews
Praise for A Troubled Guest
"Nancy Mairs writes knowingly, even lovingly, about a subject most of us seek to avoid: death and its essential place in life. Her gripping meditations … both comfort and provoke with their spiritual strength and hard-won wisdom."
—O Magazine
"The ten essays in Nancy Mairs's A Troubled Guest … radiate the truest kinds of insight about life, illness, death, and above all, love.'
—Elle Magazine
"Through these evocative and often affecting essays, Mairs charts a territory that defines the corporeal and the spiritual, delineating as much about how we live as how we die."
—Publishers Weekly
"In clear, unaffected prose that quickly establishes —along with her candor—an intimacy with the reader, Mairs begins by explaining her feelings toward her own impending death … Not self-help by any stretch, but it will be of interest to anyone recently touched by death."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Each essay is rooted in personal experience: the death of her young father when she was a girl, her witnessing her mother's death five decades later, her stepfather's death shortly thereafter, her own suicide attempt, and, in an unplanned coda, her foster son's murder. Mairs parses the meaning of rituals, the preciousness and unreliability of memories, and the ethical questions associated with assisted death and capital punishment. Unfailingly frank and balanced, she admits to her ambivalence even as she seeks the high moral road, ultimately celebrating all of life and our endless quest to understand it"
—Donna Seaman, Booklist
"Every bit as good as the previous two. Is she a spiritual writer? You'd better believe it."
—Lawrence S. Cunningham, Commonweal
Praise for Waist-High in the World
"Graceful yet gritty paradoxes drive this extraordinary book, which uses the author's degenerative disease, multiple sclerosis, as a window into a very particular soul. … Let the reader understand: this is not a book about MS, or about illness; rather, it's a chronicle of inspired adaptation, spiritual as well as physical, to limits. The aim is the creation of joy."
—Sallie Bingham, The New Mexican
"Woe is not her, as she makes clear throughout this absorbing, laceratingly honest book. … This social construction of disability … is what Mairs most wants us to 'get' in this passionate, penetrating book—and then get over."
—Marian Sandmeier, Washington Post Book World
"Vintage Mairs: sharply observed, deeply personal and always direct."
—Michael Haederle, Los Angeles Times
"As helpful as Mairs's book will be to disabled people, what's most important about it is its lessons for able-bodied readers."
—Kathi Wolfe, Progressive
"Rich, startling and utterly absorbing."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Mairs's physical view of the world may be waist-high, but her intellectual and spiritual range is limitless."
—Donna Seaman, Booklist, starred review
"'One sharp instrument is left me: my tongue.' This [Mairs] wields like a finely crafted baton, leading her readers to an ever deeper understanding of the human condition."
—Yvonne Duffy, Detroit Free Press
Praise for Voice Lessons
"Mairs is an iconoclastic thinker; hers is an unusually original book and a great pleasure to read."
—Publishers Weekly
"This is a provocative, honest, and revealing portrayal of how one writer deals with rejection and who is determined to fully despite multiple sclerosis."
—Library Journal
"A small miracle of honesty mediated by dignity and humor."
—Francine Prose, New York Newsday
"[A] rich and wise collection about becoming a writer (and a woman) … grounded in a wry and candid account of a life that would have most others hanging on the ropes … hers is a singular voice we can all attend to."
—Faye Moskowitz, Washington Post Book World
"It is fascinating to watch Nancy Mairs grappling with theoretical issues in a way that makes them personal and immediate. As in her previous work, Mairs shows the courage and tenacity and honesty of a true personal essayist."
—Philip Lopate, author of Two Marriages
Praise for Ordinary Time
"A remarkable accomplishment."
—Kathleen Norris, New York Times Book Review
"This is no ordinary book. … Consoling and poignant: a Catholic feminist moral inquiry that resists New Age simplifications and shares its message of deep faith with courage and dignity." —Kirkus
"As a Catholic feminist (an oxymoron, she observes), [Mairs] contemplates the thorny relationships she has had with the Church and with her family (at one time in her marriage, both partners were adulterous). She examines the effects of her multiple sclerosis and of her husband's cancer, conditions which contributed to their reconciliation and personal growth. In spirited essays that trace her journey from her Congregationalist childhood to her current individualistic Catholicism, she poses questions about marriage, parenthood and the meaning of suffering that will resonate with many contemporary lives. Her voice is challenging and her thrust at times radical, but Mairs maintains a disarming, self-deprecating wit and unflinching effort to remain true in this charting of the 'terrain of a conscientious life.'"
—Publishers Weekly
"This is the remarkable story of a woman who faces the vicissitudes of life with honesty, courage, and, ultimately, commitment. Hers is no easy or ideal life: her own adultery, her husband's adultery, his cancer, her multiple sclerosis, and her spiritual struggles, including bouts with clinical depression, culminate in an affirmation of marriage, life, and love that inspires Mairs to a stronger commitment. She struggles with self-image, with images of God, and with fears of loss and pain. Poignantly, she learns that she can love her husband `'more often than not, in a way that reflects the love of God,'' a sentiment that is tested when he is unfaithful. Mairs also finds feminism, Roman Catholicism, and sacrament in ways that inspire." Recommended for public and seminary libraries.
—Library Journal
Praise for Carnal Acts
"This collection provides a clear and trenchant portrait of a literary woman working within the context of both our shared contemporary culture and a personal physical disability.… Mairs provides an unflinching analysis of the effects of multiple sclerosis on her personal, professional, and emotional life. While each of these pieces may best be read alone, together they succeed in announcing a coherent and compelling consciousness of the effects and countereffects of physical limitation, social trust, fear, and courage. For creative writing collections as well as libraries serving caretakers, families, and afflicted persons—in short, for most general readers."
—Library Journal
"A tough, spellbinding collection.… Reading Mairs' essays is like lingering over coffee with an old and dear, if occasionally prickly, friend. The title acknowledges the unique perspective gained from inhabiting any particular body—in this case a female, middle-class, middle-aged, and crippled one. The life experiences, both joyful and devastating, that Mairs' body has occasioned inform some fascinating tales as she grazes among issues as diverse as literary rudeness, civil disobedience, feminine shame, and the advantages of courage and of a life that includes some hardship. As in her previous books, her unflinching honesty and humor astound as she discusses the effects of her progressive illness on her family's collective psyche and on her own (though she insists that she's no braver than she has to be), while her descriptions of some telling minor moments in one crippled woman's daily experience both illuminate and inspire."
—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Remembering the Bone House
"A mesmerizing, poetic recollection … In the tradition of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own … the author has a gift for making very personal experiences resonate."
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"The book is about the ways in which the homes we occupy help shape our memories. Some of the passages are of hair-raising beauty … This may well become a classic of its genre."
—Booklist, starred review
"Nancy Mairs defies conventional autobiography as she defies conventional life.… We need to learn what she can tell us."
—St. Louis Post Dispatch
"Because of her power as an essayist, readers will conclude along with Mairs that while she may live in other places, her 'bone house' is complete."
—San Francisco Chronicle
"As brave and boldly candid as Plaintext … A remarkable woman's clouded life, rich in themes both unique and broadly familiar, contemplated in deeply involving detail."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"To my knowledge, no woman, ever, has written with such frankness and so little self-pity. All women are in her debt."
—Carolyn Kizer
"In this haunting, transformative memoir, Nancy Mairs' determination to be somebody … is shot through with flashes of light.… She takes the deepest layer of personal experience and presents it as a gift, incandescent with meaning."
—Sallie Bingham
Praise for Plaintext
"The difficulties and despairs through which she has passed have left Nancy Mairs with unique and moving stories to convey, as well as with a strong voice to tell them."
—New York Times Book Review
"These striking essays by Nancy Mairs are so touching and heartbreakingly honest that one often has to put the book down and rest emotionally before reading on.… Readable and compelling, written with intimacy … and a swagger."
—San Francisco Chronicle
"The lugubriousness and self-pity which one might expect to surround these subjects is absent. The prose is cool and the wit as dry as sundown in Mairs' Arizona desert, the jokes as witty as the bright pink flowers on my spiny cactus."
—Women's Review of Books