The Empathy Exams made a big splash in 2014, appearing on many of the different "Best of" lists for non-fiction and essays. It didn't really catch my attention until I started noticing this pattern; up to that point I had thought it was something in the self-help/New Age genre, based solely on the title.
I'm very glad I read it in the end, because it was not even remotely what I expected, even after I saw all the critical attention it was receiving. Mary Karr's blurb on the front cover threw me off a bit as well..."This riveting book will make you a better human." I know it's coming from Mary Karr, but come on. But don't let any of that hold you back; title and blurbs aside, it's a really well-crafted book of essays that I enjoyed as much as any other nonfiction I read this year, and I would put it up with Eula Biss' On Immunity and Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me as examples of incredibly strong essay-writing from young women. I read an article on a kind of Golden Age of woman essayists, and as much as I hate that kind of generalization. I did read a lot of excellent essays by women this year, The Empathy Exams chief among them. Jamison's topics range as widely as the West Memphis Three and Ultramarathoners, but her voice is so pervasive and effective that she somehow manages to pull it all together in a way that feels earned and never convenient. She also pays thoughtful homage to her predecessors like Susan Sontag and Joan Didion, which I never tire of seeing in essays.
Perhaps the most exciting part of discovering new women essayists this past year is that so many of them have plenty of older books/pieces that I can't wait to read now.
