You Know How I Feel About You

Essays

De: Caroline Hamilton Langerman

A luminous and deeply relatable essay collection about the transformative first decade of motherhood, for readers of Mary Laura Philpott and Maggie Smith.

I may not have had a job, but I had never had more work to do.

With humor, vulnerability, and lyrical precision, Caroline Langerman chronicles her journey from a twentysomething aspiring writer waiting for her real life to begin, to a mother of three experiencing the bone-deep challenges and incandescent joys of raising children full-time. From her Manhattan single-girl professional days in which she longs to meet her perfect match, to the suburban cul-de-sacs of Charlotte, North Carolina, where her family eventually settles, and where she endeavors to make new friends, new routines, and a new identity, Caroline takes the reader deep into the heart of female experience, probing the big questions that keep us up at night. How do we give to our families without losing ourselves? Is it possible to have a truly symmetrical marriage, or is one partner always sacrificing more than the other? And if we keep up with the Joneses and the Sign-Up Geniuses, what might we miss?

With the warmth and honesty of I Miss You When I Blink, the narrative grace of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, and the poignant clarity of It. Goes. So. Fast., You Know How I Feel About You is the journey of a storyteller coming into her own. Through essays that chart the emotional rollercoaster of imagining a certain kind of future—only to discover that the lived reality is something entirely different, both better and harder than expected—Caroline is an everywoman whose observations and experiences readers will ache with, cheer on, and see themselves within.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"It’s a joyful thing to read a book that not only tells the story of its own making, but offers a gorgeous, vulnerable exploration of motherhood and marriage. Caroline Langerman choreographs an intricate dance between the striving twenty-something New Yorker she once was, the suburban mother she becomes, and the writer she has always longed to be. Like the best books about the ups and downs of parenthood (think Operating Instructions or Waiting for Birdy), this is a celebration of the messy explosion that follows our happily-ever-after. It’s also an ode to all the selves we lose and collect along the way. Most of all You Know How I Feel About You is a beautiful, frank, funny catalogue of life, keeping us company on our own rocky journeys toward the places we most want to go." —Nina de Gramont, New York Times bestselling author

"Caroline Langerman articulates the disorientation of early motherhood with magnificently acute emotional honesty. This is the book women will pass around at playgroups, pressing it into one another's hands and saying, 'She gets it.'" —Mary Laura Philpott, author of I Miss You When I Blink and Bomb Shelter: Love Time, and Other Explosives

"Caroline Langerman has penned a love letter to marriage, motherhood, and that ever-tricky part of being an adult: building community at every age and stage. Langerman’s writing feels like a whispered secret from a best friend that makes you lean in and ask: You've felt that way too? Vulnerable, hilarious, and wholly relatable, You Know How I Feel About You is a standout debut from a unique, unforgettable voice that astutely observes what it means to be a woman today." —Kristy Woodson Harvey, New York Times bestselling author of Summer State of Mind

"Every so often, a writer with x-ray vision looks closely at family life and gives us a more detailed map of that dicey, emotional terrain than we’ve had before. Caroline Langerman is just such a surveyor. She laces hard, specific, resonant truths inside beautiful sentences, my favorite kind of writing." —Kelly Corrigan, New York Times bestselling author

"Powerful storytelling and beautiful language." —Maggie Smith, author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful on "The Difficult Child" (ft. in You Know How I Feel About You)