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Making Peace with the Road Not Taken
by Jesse Browner
Jesse Browner, a novelist with a full-time job at the United Nations, has written a book reminiscent of the Talking Heads classic song "Once in a Lifetime." Based on an essay he wrote for Poets and Writers Magazine, Browner asks hard questions about life choices, about the tendency to believe there is a parallel life that might have been more fulfilling or more free. He wonders: Is the true artist made by single-minded devotion to his craft? Do we compromise our dreams in service to responsibilities to family and jobs?
These questions prompted Browner to take a hard look at himself and the evolution that brought him to this moment of existential doubt. In How Did I Get Here? he divides his adult life into five distinct phases - ambition, love, work, fulfillment, and serenity. Sketching portraits of himself at every stage, he looks for idiosyncrasies, commonalities, and clues - signposts that lead him to today. He also draws on the lives of others, from Franz Kafka to his sister to indie rocker Elliott Smith, in search of understanding. What he finds in his courageous quest is bravely honest and inspiring, touching on what it means to live a life with intention and meaning.
"Starred Review. Full of Boethius and Rilke mixed with self-analysis, it's a beautifully written, erudite, and thought-provoking examination of the underpinnings of a creative life." - Publishers Weekly
"Literarily informed and philosophically engaged, Browner's essays are infused with a rueful ambivalence as well as an all-too-human longing for possible pasts and futures." - Kirkus
"Wistful, emboldening, questioning, provocative, and whimsical... Browner understands thatthere are many ways to get to where one wants to be. He offers inspiration on both literary and personal levels." - Booklist
"Exceptional." - Library Journal
This information about How Did I Get Here? was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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The thing that cowardice fears most is decision
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