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    The Last Year
    The Last Year
    The Last Year
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    The Last Year

    By Jill Talbot

    ()

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    About this ebook

    "The moments that change us, the ghosts that follow us, the memories that slow us down or keep us afloat - Jill Talbot has found the language for all of that. Talbot, a longtime single mother, hopes she was enough as she prepares to launch her daughter into the world. Anyone who has ever loved a child will recognize themselves in her mirror. I d

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWandering Aengus Press
    Release dateDec 17, 2024
    ISBN9798218553630
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      Book preview

      The Last Year - Jill Talbot

      THE LAST YEAR

      JILL TALBOT

      WANDERING AENGUS PRESS

      PRAISE FOR JILL TALBOT’S WRITING

      The Way We Weren’t: A Memoir

      A magnetic pull sets in while reading The Way We Weren’t, a sinking into the author’s state of heart and mind, a compulsion to keep turning the pages. The memoir’s allure is a testament to Jill Talbot’s formidable talent.

      — The Boston Globe

      We pay attention to the authors who are able to make their own lives and thoughts vividly present to us. This is what Jill Talbot does, and she does it so well it can be unsettling at times.

      — The Rumpus

      A book of tremendous emotional undercurrents.

      — Los Angeles Review of Books

      Talbot has a remarkable gift for language . . . delectable prose.

      — Brevity

      A beautiful, intimate book.

      —Guernica

      Talbot is fearless in her excavation of the past—as though the future depends on it.

      — Passages North

      The Last Year: Essays

      The moments that change us, the ghosts that follow us, the memories that slow us down or keep us afloat – Jill Talbot has found the language for all of that. This is a book about the in-between time, when we look back at multiple beginnings as we brace for the good-bye. Talbot, a longtime single mother, hopes she was enough as she prepares to launch her daughter into the world. Anyone who has ever loved a child will recognize themselves in her mirror. I didn’t want this book to end.

      — Connie Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Daughters of Erietown

      In The Last Year, Jill Talbot turns the small things sacred, distilling the quiet moments between a mother and daughter into something veering toward revelation.  Each page reminds us that the greatest dramas of our lives often go unnoticed—unless we do the noticing. Part epiphany, part elegy, all love.  This book is a small mercy.  Its gift is grace.

      — B.J. Hollars, author of Go West, Young Man: A Father and Son Rediscover America on the Oregon Trail

      In The Last Year, Jill Talbot achieves that rare magic that can exist in the finest examples of the essay form: she captures the ecstatic, mysterious fullness of life in each moment. These missives are about so many things — parenthood, grief, fear, pain, joy, art. Every sentence carries the weight of the past, the breathless potential of the future. Every detail is loaded with honesty, introspection, and, above all else, care. To read it, to bear witness to this mother/daughter relationship as Talbot stands on the precipice of enormous change, is a gift.

      — Lucas Mann, author of Captive Audience: On Love and Reality TV and Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances

      Jill Talbot’s The Last Year is an evocative and heart wrenching portrait of her final days living with her daughter, Indie, who’s about to leave home for university – just as the world begins to shut down in the face of the Covid19 pandemic. With penetrating insight and raw honesty, Talbot explores the lingering absent presence of the relationships that shape our lives, from former lovers to deceased parents, as she questions ‘What happens after an ending?’ Across a series of deftly crafted essays Talbot’s prose draws lasting images of a precarious life of her and her daughter on the road as they relocate from one short term academic posting to another. Talbot proves to be a great American chronicler, like the passing moments of life caught by the Leica of beat photographer Robert Frank in The Americans, The Last Year elevates fleeting and ephemeral moments, a favourite booth in a bar, a view from a front doorstep, an empty flat left behind, to a profound view of what makes us who we are.

      — Felicity Jones, Actress and Producer

      Half Title

      Copyright © 2024 Jill Talbot

      All rights reserved.

      This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system. Excerpts may not be reproduced, except when expressly permitted in writing by the author. Permission requests should be addressed to the author at talbot.jill@gmail.com.

      Published by Wandering Aengus Press

      Nonfiction

      E-book ISBN: 9798218553630

      Cover Photo: Clifton Wiens

      Road Grad was originally published in Longreads. Versions of all the other essays originally appeared in The Paris Review Daily as a column, The Last Year.

      Wandering Aengus Press is dedicated to publishing works to enrich lives and make the world a better place.

      Wandering Aengus Press

      PO Box 334 Eastsound, WA 98245

      wanderingaenguspress.com

      CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE TITLE PAGE

      Road Grad

      FALL TITLE PAGE

      All Our Leavings

      Senior Night

      We Lived Here

      A Corner Booth

      Ghosts

      WINTER TITLE PAGE

      Trains

      Turtle, Turtle

      First Snow

      Pendulum

      The Phone Call

      SPRING TITLE PAGE

      The Envelope

      The Return

      The Rooms

      Gone

      SUMMER TITLE PAGE

      Texas History

      There Was a Beauty

      On Lasts

      Return

      Gratitude

      About the Author

      For Indie

      PROLOGUE

      ROAD GRAD

      The showers had been steady for days. Even when the rain broke, the weather app on my phone showed another coming storm. At night, lightning scarred the sky, jagged answers to the crack of thunderous questions. A relentless deluge, like so much else last year.

      In the spring of 2020, the bottom corner of TV screens broadcasting news channels recorded the rising numbers of deaths and cases, along with Dow numbers shifting, sometimes in seconds, from green to red.

      During the spring break of my daughter Indie’s senior year, her school district announced they would close schools the week following the break, with plans to reopen on March 23. On March 19, the governor of Texas temporarily closed schools until April 3, then later extended the order to May 4, and on April 17, he closed all private and public schools for the remainder of the year, while initiating steps to re-open the state for business. Indie would finish her senior year in her bedroom. She would not step back through the front doors of her high school, and she would not place her hands in purple ink and press them to a wall or write her name and 2020 beneath her handprints. There would be no Bronco Walk, when seniors paraded the school halls

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