Blueberries

essays concerning understanding

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Pub Date 3 Apr 2020 | Archive Date 1 Jun 2020

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Description

‘I mean who cares about opinions, gossip, whatever, when bodies are so vulnerable, in search only of love and breath.’

The body frequently escapes her, but is always very much present in these compellingly vivid, clear-eyed essays on an embodied self in flight through the world, from the brilliant young writer Ellena Savage.

In Portuguese police stations and Portland college campuses, in suburban Melbourne libraries and wintry Berlin apartments, Savage shows bodies in pain and in love, bodies at work and at rest.

She circles back to scenes of crimes or near-crimes, to lovers or near-lovers, to turn over the stones, re-read the paperwork, check the deeds, approach from another angle altogether. These essays traverse cities and spaces, bodies and histories, moving through forms and modes to find a closer kind of truth. Blueberries is ripe with acid, promise, and sweetness.

‘I mean who cares about opinions, gossip, whatever, when bodies are so vulnerable, in search only of love and breath.’

The body frequently escapes her, but is always very much present in these...


Advance Praise

‘Ellena Savage is a rare kind of true intellectual, a voice that rises above the cacophony with remarkable insight. In Blueberries she cuts fearless swathes through the ways that we write and think and live now and leaves us far better for it: the book is unsettling, life-affirming and essential.’

Jean Hannah Edelstein, author of This Really Isn’t About You


‘Once I started reading Blueberries, I found it almost impossible to put down. It’s fascinating to watch Ellena Savage’s mind at work in this book — her essays unfurl, expand and dance in unexpected and satisfying ways. This is a masterful, fearless book in which strength and vulnerability collide.’

Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I’m Someone Else 


‘Reading Ellena Savage’s Blueberries engaged me completely. Savage’s sparkling writing is bold, witty, insightful, fearless, and funny. It emerges from an astute mind at odds with itself, with culture and society. Savage wrestles and plays with received ideas of all kinds, and with what has and hasn’t shaped her. Savage’s fierce essays and stories are true to a lived life, and fascinating and irresistible.’

Lynne Tillman, author of Men and Apparitions: A Novel

‘Ellena Savage is a rare kind of true intellectual, a voice that rises above the cacophony with remarkable insight. In Blueberries she cuts fearless swathes through the ways that we write and think...


Available Editions

EDITION Ebook
ISBN 9781925938180
PRICE £16.99 (GBP)
PAGES 256

Average rating from 10 members


Featured Reviews

This is intelligent and probing as Savage confronts her life: as a woman living in a vulnerable female body, as a writer, as an interrogator of patriarchy. She experiments with form from journal entries to free verse, and can be dryly witty: how seeing Mary as a single mother might make some forms of Christianity more humane. The most powerful pieces tackle the aftermath of rape and trauma. Another important female voice.

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A strong collection of personal essays focusing on topics including relationships, home and the female body as well as the art of writing itself. This collection reads quickly but (as is often the case with collections of essays) these would be better read individually in order for the reader to fully process the content and get the most out of them.

The first essay (Yellow City) was the best in my view, but there aren't really any weak ones in this collection. Recommended!

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What a unique, intelligent and interrogative voice. Brilliant. Ellena astutely articulates a lot of thoughts and anxieties I've had, so it was very easy to connect with her story. Thank you ever so much for sharing your experiences with us.

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Intimate, expansive, tender, lyrical, poignant; Savage's intellectual rigour is on full display and strongly brings to mind the writing style of Cusk and Levy.

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This is such a smart, intimate, touching collection of essays. I loved... all of them, but some more than the others - there were a few where I thought, maybe this is too smart, she is trying too hard to be too clever. But mostly I loved them - loved her comments about being female, about writing, and about stability and money. Her thoughts about money and making it and having dreams and goals in a capitalist society were so interesting and insightful.

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