This Really Isn't About You

Overview

A disarmingly tender, funny and honest memoir of grief, illness and finding your way in life 

In 2014 I moved back to the United States after living abroad for fourteen years, my whole adult life, because my father was dying from cancer. Six weeks after I arrived in New York City, my father died. Six months after that I learned that I had inherited the gene that would cause me cancer too. When Jean Hannah Edelstein's world overturned she was forced to confront some of the big questions in life: How do we cope with grief? How does living change when we realize we're not invincible? Does knowing our likely fate make it harder or easier to face the future? How do you motivate yourself to go on your OkCupid date when you're struggling with your own mortality? Written in her inimitable, wry and insightful voice, Jean Hannah Edelstein's memoir is by turns heart-breaking, hopeful and yet also disarmingly funny. This Really Isn't About You is a book about finding your way in life. Which is to say, it's a book about discovering you are not really in control of that at all.

Reviews

"A most magnificent, beautifully written memoir. Unsentimental but heartbreaking, the voice—true and clear. Brilliant." —Nina Stibbe, author, Love, Nina

"Deft, witty and profound. . . . Edelstein's writing glows with a peerless clarity that had me turning the pages all night. A stunning book." —Jessie Burton, author, The Miniaturist

"Edelstein is one of the most brilliant writers of her generation, as witty, wry and unsentimental as Nora Ephron. This is a magnificent book, about families, mortality, love and the hard, necessary work of becoming an adult." —Olivia Laing, author, The Lonely City

"[A]n emotional, rich memoir, and ultimately a story of strength, acceptance, and hope."— Booklist

"Edelstein delivers a chronicle of the work in progress that was her life, over years marked by uncertainty and grief, in an account that will appeal to those who feel unmoored by the circumstances of their own lives."—Library Journal Online

Author Biography

Jean Hannah Edelstein writes regularly for outlets including The Guardian and The Pool, and writes a weekly TinyLetter, which Vogue said "pops up in your inbox like lucid dreaming." She also writes all of the marketing emails for Spotify, so you've probably deleted her work. This Really Isn't About You is her first book. She lives in Brooklyn.