Heating & Cooling

Reviews / Votes

"Heating and Cooling contains essays that are sometimes as short as 10 words . . . but add up to a surprisingly maximalist portrait of a life." -- New York Times Book Review "The micro-memoirs showcase a range of emotions that belies their brevity-taken from another standpoint, their brevity is what gives them power." -- Wall Street Journal "Beth Ann Fennelly's genre-defying collection is so engaging and readable that you won't even notice how much you're learning about confronting the hardest challenge we all share: being human. Wise, irreverent, funny. . . . Everyone should read this book." -- Atlanta Journal Constitution "Consistently entertaining. . . poised, eloquent, and full of moments of tenderness." -- Electric Literature "Varying in length from a single sentence to several pages, the essays in [Heating and Cooling] are told with wry self-awareness and compassion." -- Poets & Writers "This collection will invite you into the delicate balance between the challenging, sometimes squalid, human condition and the beauty and sadness of the transcendent." -- The Rumpus "Fennelly packs a lot into each short piece, with some lighter in subject matter and others with a sudden punch-in-the-gut feel, weighted with existential exploration. . . . Potent despite their brevity." -- Library Journal, starred "[Heating and Cooling] offer[s] insight into . . . the overall human condition. . . . A sleek, delightful collection." -- Kirkus "Fennelly recounts episodes, events, or earned truths that, given her poignant reflection and graceful, often-funny telling, are sure to stop readers in their tracks. . . . This deceptively slim, convention-defying collection delivers unerringly generous rewards." -- Booklist "Imagine the hundred things you enjoy doing most in the world. Reading Beth Ann Fennelly's Heating & Cooling is more fun than 95 of them." -- Richard Russo "Beth Ann Fennelly brings a poet's sensibility to Heating & Cooling. Each entry is both insightful and precise, a perfect pearl of memory. By marking out these 52 moments, she draws a portrait of a life that is deeply felt and fully awake. I will be the first in line when there are 52 more." -- Ann Patchett