Will and Attention

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE | A NEW YORKER BOOK TO READ THIS FALL

“This mesmerizing book, suffused with suffering and joy, ambivalence and insight, is itself an attempt to find a sense of wholeness — even if it is momentary and elusive, generated less by acts of will than by moments of grace.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“A remarkable memoir. . . . Will and Attention is more complex and surprising than its form suggests. . . . One fascination of this brave book—brave in its disclosures but more so in its demands, its spiritual rigor, and its ardent intellectualism—lies in watching the eloquent, intelligent sufferer steadily entrapping herself. . . . [A] remarkably honest spiritual journal.”
—The New Yorker

“[A] bracing memoir of religion and addiction. . . . “Memoir” may be too limiting of a category for the kind of book O’Gieblyn has written. Will and Attention is a raw account of the author’s mid-life relapse, rich in first-person detail like any good memoir. It’s also a probing examination of the concept of the will itself. . . . One of the thrills of this book is the sheer range of religious and philosophical texts O’Gieblyn scours for answers. . . . O’Gieblyn’s reading of these thinkers is personal and exacting. . . . Will and Attention is an extraordinary exercise in paying attention. There’s unlikely to be anything quite like it around the next corner.”
—Sojourners

“O’Gieblyn, in the span of its pages, successfully manages to turn the authorial gaze fully on herself and the twinned problems introduced in its title: will, as in the idea of free will and to will to change our lives, and the attention we pay to self-examination and the world around us. Drawing on the French philosopher Simone Weil, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, Catholic theology, and more, O’Gieblyn produces an addiction memoir that transcends the form, and offers a salient exploration of what varieties of care and attention we owe ourselves and others.”
—The Baffler

“I was instantly helpless before Meghan O’Gieblyn’s Will and Attention, which spoke with a kind of flaying clarity and graceful consolation to a set of questions about worth, depravity, intention, and practice that scaffold my entire experience of the world. O’Gieblyn brings profound rigor to an examination of terrifying malleability; she is philosophically unrestricted while being uncompromising in her honesty about confusion and doubt. This is one of the best memoirs of the decade—a cool-water baptism, so bracing I felt transformed.”
—Jia Tolentino, New Yorker culture critic and author of Trick Mirror

“An elegant and philosophical memoir about addiction whose stakes are no less than what comprises one’s will to live, what it means to be good, and the worth of devotion. I savored equally O’Gieblyn’s sentences and the turns of her thought—at once precise as the cut of a razor and as pleasurably discursive as Montaigne.”
—Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and The Dry Season

“Meghan O’Gieblyn is a seeker, a wry skeptic, a spiritual explorer, and a beautiful writer. Will and Attention amounts to a brilliant portrait of a brilliant person: gentle, melancholy, bracing, and astute.”
—Lorrie Moore, author of Birds of America and Self-Help

“Most memoirs look retroactively at—and therefore create—the story of the self. Will and Attention has dispensed with the notion that this is possible. Instead, Meghan O’Gieblyn explores the recursive nature of struggle, the untidiness of growth, and the humility of being human. Will and Attention is a profound act of personal, spiritual, and philosophical inquiry. I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time.”
—Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists and The Anatomy of Dreams

“O’Gieblyn’s memoir is a reminder of the power that is dormant in philosophy and poetry, fragments of human insight that lie ready to speak to us in times of need.”
—Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman, co-authors of Metaphysical Animals

“Will and Attention is a gorgeous meditation on recovery, humanity, and spirituality. With profound wisdom, Meghan O’Gieblyn has penned a memoir that asks what it takes for us to return—and commit—to the goodness of our truest selves.”
—Qian Julie Wang, author of Beautiful Country

“An utterly compelling exploration of the mysteries of the human heart for anyone who’s fallen down and struggled to find forgiveness as they rise back up.”
—Quan Barry, author of We Ride Upon Sticks and The Unveiling

“Will and Attention is a feat of uncommon honesty. O’Gieblyn’s intellectual rigor and spiritual bravery land her in the firmament of the finest thinkers to take up these two vast, essential, and entwined subjects, among them Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch and Carl Jung. A bracing, beautiful book that reads like a fortifying talk with an intimate companion. Mesmerizing, invigorating, and profound.”
—Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus and I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness

“Staggering. This is the single best book about the relationship between faith and addiction I have ever read, which, by definition, makes it the single best book about addiction I have ever read. A prayer to recovery in the deepest sense of the word: the reclamation of something fundamental. It turns out the God-shaped hole was book-shaped all along.”
—Keiran Goddard, author of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

“Oof! It’s as if I’ve just watched a shadowboxing match between discipline & discipleship, between will & the search for wholeness. Meghan O’Gieblyn has written the strangest, most lyrical, imminently engrossing memoir-cum-poetics of doubt & self-learning.”
—Anna Badkhen, author of Bright Unbearable Reality

“Meghan O’Gieblyn’s mind is an astonishing place. Her thoughts, ideas, and connections, are ricocheting and forming spectacular creations that are the epitome of what a brain at its most powerful can achieve. The philosophies she leans upon, builds on, and blasts wide open, are ones that, until I read her analyses of them, I managed to take at face value. Words themselves enter complicated ground in her capable deconstruction. . . . This is a stupendous and mind-expanding book, written by someone whose intellect is one to which I bow down. . . . This is. . . about the burning core at the center of our selves, where it is that desire stems from, and where it can lead, and whether the final destination of truth is somewhere that we will ever reach. Intricate and humane, with a depth of thinking that is a blessing to behold, Will and Attention is a book that will hold your presence completely, and will be remembered forever in its wake.”
—Lit Hub

“O’Gieblyn uses her lapses to do some exhilaratingly deep thinking about the meaning and purpose of her life. A novelistic, thrillingly confessional memoir.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Luminous. . . . Both funny and sad, this memoir interleaved with philosophy is a compelling and thought-provoking read that will capture the heart and mind. A beautiful story of wrestling with addiction and religion that will delight all memoir readers or those considering the place of technology and attention.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

“[An] extraordinary memoir that is as much philosophical and theological exploration as it is a narrative of personal struggle. . . . Against a backdrop of technology’s sprint toward humanlike intelligence (a topic O’Gieblyn explored in her book God, Human, Animal, Machine), this memoir’s depiction of anguish, unwieldy desire, and wonder is especially resonant. . . . The achievement of this memoir is its hard-won apprehension of beauty and its wonder at the sheer existence of the world.”
—Commonweal

“Will and Attention takes readers on an intellectual journey as O’Gieblyn attempts to reconfigure the narratives of her life and her recovery, to master her divided will and conflicting desires. . . . O’Gieblyn succeeds, telling her story with stunning clarity, cutting easily through complex concepts and draping every scene in color, light, and motion. A moving and astute examination of addiction, longing, and grace, Will and Attention is deeply worthy of readers’ attention.”
—Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“[A] sophisticated self-portrait from essayist O’Gieblyn. . . . Throughout, O’Gieblyn’s refined prose captures the hidden tide that pulls a person back into dependency, and the ways that the “discipline of attention” acts as an “avenue toward self-knowledge” when willpower fails. Those who’ve grappled with their own addictions will relate.’’
—Publishers Weekly

“This unconventional memoir pairs a moving personal narrative with reflections on life’s essential questions . . . The result is a thought-provoking, poignant, and inspiring memoir about using intellect to pursue clarity and personal transformation.”
—Booklist