The searing strokes of this book remind me of the infinitude inside
every life. --Leslie Jamison
Paris Review* Staff Pick, one of Chicago Tribune's 25 Hot Books of
Summer, and one of The A.V. Club's 15 Most Anticipated Books of
2019**
**
A stark, elegiac account of unexpected pleasures and the progress of
seasons**
Fifteen years ago, Kathryn Scanlan found a stranger's five-year diary at
an estate auction in a small town in Illinois. The owner of the diary
was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her
life in the small book, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. The
diary was falling apart--water-stained and illegible in places--but
magnetic to Scanlan nonetheless.
After reading and rereading the diary, studying and dissecting it, for
the next fifteen years she played with the sentences that caught her
attention, cutting, editing, arranging, and rearranging them into the
composition that became Aug 9--Fog (she chose the title from a note
that was tucked into the diary). "Sure grand out," the diarist writes.
"That puzzle a humdinger," she says, followed by, "A letter from Lloyd
saying John died the 16th." An entire state of mourning reveals itself
in "2 canned hams." The result of Scanlan's collaging is an utterly
compelling, deeply moving meditation on life and death.
In Aug 9--Fog, Scanlan's spare, minimalist approach has a maximal
emotional effect, remaining with the reader long after the book ends. It
is an unclassifiable work from a visionary young writer and artist--a
singular portrait of a life revealed by revision and restraint.
