“[A] playful , tender, form-busting memoir … All of Us Atoms contains multitudes; it’s a celebration of the ties that bind us to one another, of the strength of women , and of the power of words to connect us and carry us forwards”
~ The Observer
“Raw, brave and compelling – the sentences fizz with brilliance and beauty. To read Holly’s writing is to live it. She’s a genius, an alchemist, an artist-warrior”
~ Helena Bonham Carter
“An extraordinary memoir, a blazing, incandescent love song to memory, to her children and, in all its sublime and intoxicating and tragic raiments, to life itself. This debut shook me to the core”
~ Lily King
“I loved it. The smarts, lyricisms, surprises and deep humanity of it all”
~ Susie Orbach
What makes us who we are? What stories do we inherit, invent – and leave behind? Faced with the prospect of losing her memory, a writer revisits the moments that changed her. Told through shifting pronouns and perspectives, moving across place and time, each piece twists the kaleidoscope of existence to make sense of the present through the past. From the opening battle between her brain and her body, a conversation emerges between her collection of selves: the Daughter, the Sister, the Dancer, the Gardener, the Mother, the Girl-Who-Read-Woolf. Reliving her journey of becoming, she unpicks the fabric of fact and experience to stitch a new tapestry of personhood, both real and imaginary, mundane and profound.
‘All Of Us Atoms offers a tender portrait of the tension between our drive to make sense of things and the freedom that comes from throwing categories away.
It heralds the arrival of a major new literary voice, urging us to reframe and reclaim our own stories and revel in our mutable, messy, multitudinous selves.’
Read full review in The Observer
Listen to inteview on Field Ramble
Publicity queries:
annaframe@canongate.co.uk