Plaintext

My copy of "Plaintext" is dogeared because I've reread it a lot. I've also bought copies for friends. It's honesty and directness captured me immediately. I felt I was in the company of a real person who was not afraid to talk with me about her life. The religious component is important too because Mairs tells me about her spiritual struggles, her anger and loves. Her life in the Catholic church is exposed so that we can identify with her. She deals with questions we ask too. When this book was first published, I'd read nothing like it before. I'm an ordained woman and needed to confront some of the same issues dealt with here, marriage, unfaithfulness, doubts. I also loved the Arizona setting, since I live in northern Arizona and felt close to Mairs because we had that world in common. This book is one treasure I'll never part with. Elaine Greensmith Jordan, 2008

I have never read a book of essays from beginning to end but I could not put this one down. It reads like a novel with the depth of an extended poem. Each essay presents a journey into the interior of human heart--an intricate, rocky road through emotions and experiences entirely unique and yet completely understandable. Sometimes I felt like I was looking in the mirror, finding my whole life in a line, on a page. Other times I felt as if I had made a new and very intimate friend. I chose this book because I have been struggling with a new-found disability and had read that Nancy Mairs had written about her experiences with Multiple Sclerosis in an essay with the gutsy title: "On Being a Cripple." I was delighted to hear Mairs treat this issue with pain and wisdom, and then move on to so many more aspects of her own life story. The writing is exquisite--complex, delicate, and blunt. The stories are gripping accounts of infidelity, depression, suicide, terror, appreciation, parenting, sex, mystery, loneliness, humor, writing, and love. The honesty with which she reveals details about herself and her family is unprecedented. And some sort of affiirmation comes with each gritty revelation, making the irreducible value of human experience once again apparent. Mairs is a feminist, but not in any formulaic manner. Her plea is that women be given the opportunity to explore all of the facets of their own humanity; that being locked in limited roles has caused so many of us to go "mad." Her poignant recollections of younger days are all but universal. Who has not felt different, alienated, self-effacing, and alone at least some time in their life? I cannot imagine anyone not being gripped by the courage and the genius of Mairs' honesty and introspection.

I've read only a few of Mairs' essays from this volume, and the ones I've read are beautifully crafted. Nancy Mairs hates having MS, yet she is not sorry to be a cripple (a term she prefers to handicapped or disabled.) How can this be? Nancy Mairs reveals her life as it is lived day-to-day, as a married, employed, active, wife, mother, and, most importantly, woman and human being. Her style and tone is such that even those unconnected to any kind of disability or disabled person will be profoundly moved by her autobiographical essays.