It made me feel things and was mostly well written, but there was something I didn't like about it. Can't put my finger on it though. ( )

I ended up putting this down on about page 130 or so. Sadly, I was distracted by the vignettes that pulled away from Thandi and her story. ( )

I had difficulty with this one. Its written in a flowy random stream of consciousness style. It is a book about loss and dealing with the grief after. I had a hard time following though since we jump all throughout the authors life. Good book, this style just isn't for me.

Check it out though, it may be for you! ( )

touching novel about the loss of one's mother. "I've amazed myself with how well I've learned to live around her absence. This void is my constant companion, no matter what I do. Nothing will fit it, and it will never go away."

"for every suffering there is equal and opposite joy." ( )

Clemmons uses a very different sort of structure for this novel, and it's unabashedly autobiographical, but also affecting and well done. ( )

There was a lot going on here, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. I couldn't stop wondering whether this was a memoir, since I know so much of this parallels Clemmons' personal experience, and the inclusion of factual information--such as South African history and the disparities in the health care of minorities--seemed to reinforce that. I appreciated the disjointed nature as a manifestation of grief, but parts of the narrative were uneven enough to make the novel feel unfinished. This, along with the memoir-ish feel, took me out of the experience enough to not love the book, but I'll be interested to see what Clemmons brings us down the road. ( )

This is how my book choices go, when I want to read EVERYTHING on my shelves: Have Paul Beatty's 'Slumberland' in my hand. See the Junot Diaz blurb on the back. Remember I wanted to get to Zinzi Clemmons 'What We Lose' this year. Glance at the acknowledgments page of 'What We Lose' and see Paul Beatty and Kiese Laymon taught her to write. Heck yeah.
Diving into the book, I thought this was a novel but it seems more like a memoir or at the most auto-fiction that is very close to the writer's life. I would love to ask what the difference is between her life and the narrative, but I guess she really did take care of her mom dying of cancer. And that is the truest and most heartbreaking that shows through here. Chapters are short. Very matter-of-fact. ( )

2.5 Eloquent. Since it was audio, I assumed it was memoir - it had the same self-centered focus and is mostly about the narrator and her young adult life. Definitely auto-biographical strands based on Clemmons' background. It's kind of a coming-of-age story, delayed in millennial fashion and the narrator, Thandi is in the center of the circle of life, mourning her mother's death from cancer, and discovering her unplanned pregnancy with across-the-continent "boyfriend" Peter. Issues of race and economic disparity are touched on here, but mostly it is a tale of relationships - the best and worst of the people we love the most - and how to give that context. I think I would've like it more had I read and not listened. ( )

2.5 stars ( )

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it was a pleasant and relateable quick read.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I consider it a novel. This isn't just because large chunks of it are clearly thinly veiled autobiography. It's more that, especially for a slender book, a lot of it is simply-told exposition, only slightly more detailed than "We got married. We bought a house." It felt like skimming across the protagonist's life, only rarely getting any depth or resonance, which made it hard to connect to the characters.

I didn't dislike What We Lose - but it also didn't move me. ( )

This one gave me the hot fudge sundae effect: warm delicious writing at times, tension, story...yet hard cold facts stuck in here and there. Gifted writer, but not my favorite book, mainly because of the insertions. ( )

I enjoyed Clemmons' writing, and many of the vignettes in this book were moving and captured a particular feeling well. The structure didn't work for me, though, especially the little pieces of news about South Africa that were sprinkled in. I think this would have worked better if there had just been vignettes without much dialogue or other elements, kind of like "Dept of Speculation," or as a straight novel with more fleshed out characters and scenes. I think I would have preferred the later because I did want to hear more from the narrator's funny cousin, best friend, and Peter, too. I would read her work again, though. ( )

Read for my "Telling Stories in the 21st Century" class.

A beautifully written, compelling story about grief and identity. Now I get to write an essay about this book, too. ( )

As a college composition professor, I'd look at a collection of pages like this and say, where are the connections? That's why I hate teaching college composition. I feel like Clemmons is creating a new, exciting un-structure for narrative which allows her novel to be about thousands of things while still concentrating on the powerful point of view of our protagonist. I loved this book. ( )

Very approachable book to deal woth the death of a mother and some racial insights. ( )

I can understand how a lot of people loved this book for the emotional feel, but maybe I am more of an analytical than an emotional person. Much of the prose seemed to me rather numb or distant instead of deep. My main issue is with the structure of the book which felt more like a memoir than fiction and was rather thin. Also, it seemed very disjointed and lazy. There are some beautiful passages, but not enough to make this more than a 3⭐️ book. ( )

I really wanted to like this more. Personally and professionally, grief stories are my thing. Maybe my expectations are higher than most because I have read so many of these. I could not relate or connect to her. She seemed to be struggling to express her feelings but stayed distant from them. This was her debut, though. I have high hopes for her. ( )

Actual rating: 4.5 Stars

“I've amazed myself with how well I've learned to live around her absence. This void is my constant companion, no matter what I do. Nothing will fill it, and it will never go away.”
Zinzi Clemmons, What We Lose

Clemmons's debut novel is compelling, poignant and reflective. It is filled with short, nonlinear vignettes of Thandi's life -- particularly after the loss of her mother to cancer. Thandi's father is African American and her mother is mixed race South African. As a light skinned young black woman, Thandi struggles with identity, belonging and the past. Through Clemmons's descriptive writing, I was able to grasp Thandi's grief, despair, and vulnerability. Even though race comes up in the book, What We Lose is about a lot more than race. It is about loss, grief, traditions, and how death plays a role in life. Clemmons is a graceful, and poetic writer. I look forward to additional work by this talented writer.

A huge thanks to Edelweiss and Viking for providing me with an arc of the book in exchange for an honest review. It was a pleasure!

For more reviews, visit: http://debbiesbooknook.com/ ( )

This book is gorgeous and readable and smart. It's totally outside the box, but not ever in a jarring or frustrating way. It's brief (just over 200 pages), which I love, but poignant. I don't want to say too much about the story itself because I think reading it without preconceptions makes for a remarkably engaging experience. ( )

Ms. Clemmons writes well. Her prose is direct, and she definitely captures many aspects of grief based on my experience of it. The story did not grab me, although thete were moments when I thought it was going to. I look forward to checking out her future efforts. ( )

I still feel conflicted 24 hours after finishing this short novel. What We Lose had beautiful writing, and an emotional storyline, but the structure felt jarring. I wish the author had written another 100 pages, to fully explore some of the vignettes that felt cut too short. Not a hit for me, but I would definitely read more by this author. ( )

I almost mistook this novel for a memoir and don't take that for a bad thing. It's rare that a novel feels so honest, realistic, and compelling. The death of the narrator's mother from breast cancer frames this novel and the author digs into the grieving process in a way which indicates that she must know these emotions well. This book is so simple yet so compelling and I don't know exactly what to say about it other than to say: read this book. ( )

"This was the paradox: How would I ever heal from losing the person who healed me? The question was so enormous that I could see only my entire life, everything I know, filling it."

"I thought about how every place on Earth contains its tragedies, love stories, people surviving and others falling, and for this reason, from far enough of a distance and under enough darkness, they were all essentially the same."

I rather loved this short novel of grief and mourning. Part meditation, part coming of age story, and wholly a tale of a young biracial woman, born in South Africa and raised in the U.S., searching for her place in the world. Clemmons' writing is deceptively straightforward, creating moments of deep feeling without relying on flowery turns of phrase or even poetic rhythms or imagery. Thandi is a compellingly honest narrator of her experience. Neither bitter nor bathetic, she captures the universal experience of mourning while exploring the particularity of Thandi's complicated intersecting identities. And did I mention that it's a short novel? Definitely recommended. ( )

This is primarily a novel of grief, although it does a wonderful job of exploring race relations, particularly between women of color. Taking place across two continents, the book reads like an autobiography or a diary instead of a work of fiction. It's not told in a traditional style, which I found both intriguing and sometimes off-putting. It draws in real events, photos, charts, and more to illustrate points, and has been described as being told in a "stream of consciousness" style of writing. I read an article about the author and many of the events her fictional character Thandi experiences are based on her own life, such as the illness and loss of her mother while she was a college student. It's a compelling read and the author has a very unique voice. ( )

Liked the style of writing. Also enjoyed the things about South Africa. ( )