Awkward: A Detour

At once easy and hard to put down. A rare gathering of thoughts, answers, and questions. A favorite passage: "And then one day it hits you - not all at once but in waves, and who knows why this particular day is to be a wave of succession or what led to it, but it hits you in a suffusing kind of way - of the time things take and of the need to live long enough to receive all the truths you weren't ready to receive, all in good time and at the right time, in readiness or shock, in openness or choosing now, marshaling your resources to throw some habit off its course; of the need to live long enough to face a desire, to make something happen and live with the happening's of the time it takes to learn about all that was good, and all the good you could do, or just to feel the ground beneath you as though it were strewn with bay leaves or egg crates, seashells, or shards; or the sense of a vanishing now at the site of what once was lush undergrowth and concrete, deep pockets of what-had-beens, a corner of the yard where a tap on the arm mingled with the smoky waft of a hot dog plumping on a grill and hydrangea was a face made of lacy stars pulling your own face toward it, or just to know it was there to hide behind, a placemarker at that juncture in the garden, like a doily dropped onto your head at church telling you you were there, you'd known this once, you'd been there before; to live long enough to become fully sentient."

Awkward, A Detour by Mary Cappello is a brilliant, far-ranging meditation on the many aspects of awkwardness. Cappello takes the reader on journeys through Rome, Sicily, London, Moscow, and places in Canada and the United States as she explores the permutations of awkward. She delves deeply into her own past and present and that of her family and the impact of immigration on awkwardness. Cappello carefully explores the awkwardness found in the lives and literary works of Emily Dickinson and Henry James. Mary Cappello's book is poignant,moving, humorous, and heart and eye-opening.