Biblioracle: Getting excited for Hannah Pittard’s upcoming memoir ‘We Are Too Many’
This week I’m going to break a couple of the guidelines I try to hold myself to here.
One is that I try not to write about books that aren’t already released and available to the public. Having been greatly irritated by reviews that tout a book that won’t be out for a number of weeks (or even months), I have no wish to visit that irritation on anyone else.
However, I am breaking my own rule because I am so excited about this book, which will not be out until May 2, and want to be one of the first on record about its greatness.
The book? “We Are Too Many” by Hannah Pittard.
The book is billed as a memoir in which Pittard digs through her past and present in the aftermath of discovering that her husband is having an affair with her best friend, a discovery she makes as she is heading to New York on the eve of the release of her third novel (“Listen to Me”) where she is to meet up with her husband and best friend.
While that hook is undeniably powerful, this inciting incident serves as a jumping-off point from which Pittard examines and interrogates the very stuff of love, marriage, relationships, grieving, and trying to be a whole and contented person in the world. The shock is a kind of crucible through which Pittard emerges, bringing, dare I say it, wisdom.
The other guideline I’m going to break is giving any credence to a book’s jacket copy, which is often larded with hyperbole, an advertisement not to be trusted. But in this case, that copy calls the book, “Clever and bold and radically honest to an unthinkable degree,” and my only response is that I couldn’t have said it better myself.
As stunning as the book is, I was not entirely surprised. I have been a Pittard fan since her 2011 debut, “The Fates Will Find Their Way,” a novel about a missing girl and the people marked by her absence. The book offers a rawness mixed with elegance, and shows an acuity of insight into the complexities of human feeling that is truly special. It’s a book I’ve recommended often.
Her follow-up, “Reunion,” is equally powerful, another story of absence, as the plot revolves around the sudden death of the narrator’s father and the family secrets that are revealed as they gather to lay the man to rest.
“Listen to Me” is a gripping road trip horror novel that serves as the backdrop for a story of a crumbling marriage, a relationship that we find out in “We Are Too Many” significantly resembles Pittard’s own.
“We Are Too Many” opens with a series of dialogues — some real, some remembered and some invented — which often mix humor and sadness in the span of several lines. In some ways, they read like an interrogation Pittard is conducting of her husband and her best friend, but Pittard is just as likely to turn the lens on herself as she wrestles with loving the two people who betrayed her.
In the second half of the book, Pittard takes the wreckage and holds it up to the world around us, wondering if anything other than what happened is even possible, if happiness and contentment are simply not in the cards for creatures as complex as humans.
Pittard’s attempt to make sense of the senseless draws the reader toward the same questions. In the end, we are not only drawn into an intimacy with the author, but we may come to know ourselves better as well.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “They’re Going to Love You” by Meg Howrey
2. “The Rabbit Hutch” by Tess Gunty
3. “Foster” by Claire Keegan
4. “Less Is Lost” by Andrew Sean Greer
5. “I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jennette McCurdy
— Mary G., Los Angeles
Mary is a good fit for a novel that mixes drama, humor, mystery and Irishness into an epic coming-of-age story: “Skippy Dies” by Paul Murray.
1. “Eat the Document” by Dana Spiotta
2. “Lincoln in the Bardo” by George Saunders
3. “The Sense of Beauty” by George Santayana
4. “The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen
5. “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates
— Bill T., San Francisco
My Biblioracle senses immediately said, “Louise Erdrich,” so the tougher part is picking among a number of choice candidates. I’m going with “The Round House.”
1. “Book Lovers” by Emily Henry
2. “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus
3. “Black Cake” by Charmaine Wilkerson
4. “Everything I Never Told You” by Celeste Ng
5. “The Last Thing He Told Me” by Laura Dave
— Lisa P., Northbrook
I’ve got nothing against celebrity book clubs because I’m all for anything that gets people reading, but I think just about all of these are part of those clubs, so I’m going to recommend a book that is not on those lists, but is one that I think will be a good fit for Lisa, “Happy All the Time” by Laurie Colwin.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com
