“Maggie Nelson slays entrenched notions of gender, marriage, and sexuality with lyricism, intellectual brass, and soul-ringing honesty.The appeal of the book is that it’s about love, as much as about queerness: about the conjugal and maternal love that amazes Nelson with its unexpected plenitude, coming after years of solitude. The scare quotes burn off like fog.” - Ben Lerner, author of 10:04 No piety is safe, no orthodoxy, no easy irony. “Maggie Nelson cuts through our culture’s prefabricated structures of thought and feeling with an intelligence whose ferocity is ultimately in the service of love. “So much writing about motherhood makes the world seem smaller after the child arrives, more circumscribed, as if in tacit fealty to the larger cultural assumptions about moms and domesticity Nelson’s book does the opposite.” - The New York Times Book Review

“A superb exploration of the risk and the excitement of change….An exceptional portrait both of a romantic partnership and of the collaboration between Nelson’s mind and heart.” - The New Yorker “Brilliant like nothing else you’ve ever read, Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts is as hard to pin down as it is stunning…Although slim, The Argonauts contains worlds of thought and feeling, challenging our assumptions and moving our hearts.”. It’s about love, in other words.” -Rachel Kushner author of The Flame Throwers “A book I believe will endure…It is not about, but for: for life, bewilderment, grace. “I read The Argonauts in one breathless, tearful, mind-blown day and I’m still recovering.” - Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man “It’s hard to write about love as an idea without veering into abstraction and love as an emotion without veering into smarminess Nelson pulls both off with brilliant candor.” -Alexandra Schwartz, New Yorker’s Books We Loved in 2015 “A gorgeous book, inventive, fearless, and full of heart.” - Kim Gordon, author of Girl in a Band “One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation.” - Olivia Laing, author of The Trip to Echo Springs Perfect for escaping into.” - Grace Dent, Evening Standard “A complicated, intimate book about motherhood and identity. absolutely love this book.”- Jenny Turner, London Review of Books

“Provocative and passionately brilliant.”- Geoff Dyer, author of Working the Room Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.Ī Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson