The Crying Book

I am, for better or worse, not usually a cryer. Heather Christle is, and at first I thought her book would be a defense of that maligned, female-aligned activity. And in some ways it is, but it quickly becomes far more complex than that. Written as a series of tiny anecdotes, quotes, aphorisms, and notes from science, art, and myth, her narrative turns her subject through a kaleidoscope in which tears are both a burden and a release and a source of pride and stigma, and in which this most intensely personal phenomenon is held close and at the arm's length of observation. (Did you know tears from crying have more proteins than those made to cleanse the eyes?) I was dog-earing pages and examining (metaphorically) my own eyes.