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Dear Abigail,

I read Safekeeping, well, because I had to, and because that's what graduate students do: we read and then talk about what we read and then try and do something like it ourselves, and then maybe talk about why we particularly sucked at it. Something that came up repeatedly in the conversation about your book was the question of genre: is Safekeeping a collection of essays, or are they prose poems? Is the book one cohesive piece? What is it? The conversation could have driven me mad. Half of the class, the half more inclined towards this habit of labeling and categorizing pieces of writing, wanted to do just that, and struggled to shove Safekeeping into their pre-made mental boxes that house different modes of creative nonfiction. The other half, the one I fell into, wanted to just take the book as it was, to enjoy it as a collective whole, and to do away with any kind of feeble attempt to break it down in terms of what criteria it did and did not meet.

I read Safekeeping because I had to, but I read it again because it was beautiful. I read it again because it was one of the first books about relationships that did not make me want to slam the cover closed and toss it forcibly at a wall. There is something immensely honest and human about a person attempting to understand her experiences through writing. After all, that's why we do it, isn't it? To try and understand all the things we feel and do, to unravel the ridiculous simplicity of something we thought was earth-shattering, and to sit with the thickness and quiet of the complicated parts? Over time, as writers, and as people, we learn, and maybe allow the world to teach us, what is worth trying to understand and what should be left as it is. Like you taught me in your book, sometimes things simply are what they are. "She had learned by then," you wrote, "it wasn't necessary to keep setting the record straight."

This book is a perfect example of a writer both unraveling ridiculous simplicity and sitting with the complications of adulthood, parenthood, and relationships. Even its alternating structure of short, to-the-point vignettes to longer, more intimate recollections and reflections, this book seems an accurate portrait of the way we remember things—in pieces, and not always in order of importance or worth. As you showed in this book, even those small, seemingly insignificant moments are deserving of pages in our story, like the way someone we love speaks our name in that way that only they can: "It was the inflection maybe, something you put into those three syllables. And now you are gone and my name is just my name again, not the story of my life."

I read Safekeeping because I had to, but I'll keep revisiting and reading it again and again because it validates the parts of writing that I love the most, the parts I think reflect the most about the human experience—brokenness, honesty, and a desire to understand.

Best,
Sara Walters