'Luminous. . . A literary lachrymatory, both consoling and surprisingly uplifting' Hephzibah Anderson, ObserverHeather Christle has just lost a dear friend to suicide and now must reckon with her own depression and the birth of her first child. As she faces her grief and impending parenthood, she decides to research the act of crying: what it is and why people do it, even if they rarely talk about it. Along the way, she discovers an artist who designed a frozen-tear-shooting gun and a moth that feeds on the tears of other animals. She researches tear-collecting devices (lachrymatories) and explores the role white women's tears play in racist violence.Honest, intelligent, rapturous and surprising, Christle's investigations look through a mosaic of science, history, and her own lived experience to find new ways of understanding life, loss, and mental illness. The Crying Book is a deeply personal tribute to the fascinating strangeness of tears and the unexpected resilience of joy.'Poised and precise. . . [The Crying Book] reminds us - when we need it most - that we move in relationship rather than invidivual adventure, that the tender connections between our tears are all we really have to hold' Rachel Andrews, Irish Times'There are beautifully realised moments of heart-stopping vulnerability when you think Christle will unravel. But then she staunches her tears and tends to her broken soul . . . Like consciousness, Christle contends, crying lies at the heart of being self-aware' Marina Benjamin, New Statesman'Christle's background as a poet informs her use of pattern and juxtaposition to generate meaning from her wide-ranging research, and the result is a thoughtful, often moving rumination on the expression of emotions beyond the reach of language' The New Yorker

Shatteringly beautiful - TelegraphLuminous . . . A literary lachrymatory, both consoling and surprisingly uplifting - ObserverPoised and precise . . . [The Crying Book] reminds us - when we need it most - that we move in relationship rather than invidivual adventure, that the tender connections between our tears are all we really have to hold - Irish TimesIn The Crying Book, Heather Christle makes a poignant and piercing examination of the phenomenon of tears - exhaustive, yes, but also open-ended, such that I was left clutching this book to my chest with wonder, asking myself when the last time was that I cried, and why. A deeply felt, and genuinely touching, book. - Esme Weijun Wang, author of The Collected SchizophreniasThe Crying Book is spellbinding and propulsive - the map of a luminous mind in conversation with books, songs, friends, scientific theories, literary histories, her own jagged joy, and despair. Heather Christle is a visionary writerThis is a book about crying, yes, but secretly it's a book about everything: pain, sleep, joy, despair, birth, art, exile, atrocity, language, weather, fish. Christle's genius - a word I've never before written to describe a living author - is her ability to see the miraculous and strange lines connecting everything to everything: 'neither parallel nor perpendicular,' she writes, but simply 'arcs that momentarily intersect before traveling on. The Crying Book is a rigorous and urgent work, but it reads like an intimate giftThis is a wonderful and profound look at the act of crying - something human and yet hidden, common and yet mysterious. I found myself reading with a thirst for the tears Heather Christle collects here - instances within literature, film, history, and the author's own life all add up to a greater understanding of what makes us human.Poet Christle set out to make a map of every place she had cried. Instead, she ended up with this exploration of tears throughout history, in art and literature, and in her own life . . . The cumulative effect hits the mark, and readers are sure to be moved to tears themselves. This is a lovely meditation on life and death through the lens of tears, both those spurred by grief and those by joy - Booklist