My Little Donkey: And Other Essays

(Paperback)

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A collection of searching, curious, and surprising essays catalyzed by the author's move in her sixties to a small Italian village, exploring selfhood, coincidence, inheritance, and the impermanence of identity A collection of searching, curious, and surprising essays catalyzed by the author's move in her sixties to a small Italian village, exploring selfhood, coincidence, inheritance, and the impermanence of identity In 2021, in her mid-sixties, Martha Cooley moved with her husband from the United States to Castiglione del Terziere, a village in northernmost Tuscany. Prompted by this relocation, the essays in My Little Donkey chronicle her encounters with people, animals, the past, and herself as she reckons with the fallout of a major life-change. Following curiosity where it leads, Cooley delves into music and silence, the vagaries of history, the complexity of familial legacies, and the presence and power of animals in human lives. With its spirited examinations of uncanny coincidences and chance events, My Little Donkey's varied essays offer the vivid pleasures of story combined with the provocations of a writer looking behind the curtain of appearances, intent on honest assessments of what she sees and feels. Whimsical yet at the same time intellectually and emotionally bold, these essays tackle the conundrum of time's passage- how to adapt, pay attention, embrace contradiction, and enjoy the ride

Reviews

"Martha Cooley has a generous mind that manages to coax out of ordinary experience insights and layers of meaning that pass the rest of us by. Expatriate life, the human body, ageing, siblinghood, music, our connection to the animal world: these are just a handful of the subjects that weave through essays aglow with compassion, grace, and delight. My Little Donkey is a book to be awakened by and to cherish." Michael Frank, author of One Hundred Saturdays

"Not since Natalia Ginzburg's The Little Virtues has there been a book like this. One reads with awe and surprise throughout. Martha Cooley's deft touch and mosaic method are in the service of a profoundly mature sense of life. She is the rising star of the personal essay." Benjamin Taylor, author of Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth

Author Bio

MARTHA COOLEY is the author of three novels-The Archivist (a national bestseller published in a dozen foreign markets), Thirty-Three Swoons, and Buy Me Love-and the memoir Guesswork. Her short fiction, essays, and translations have appeared in numerous literary journals.