Martha Cooley

- "The Archivist, Martha Cooleys first novel, was a national bestseller and a "New York Times Notable Book.- With the assurance, complexity, and depth of a work by Bulgakov, DeLillo, or Poe, Martha Cooleys extraordinary second novel is further evidence that she is one of the most gifted writers at work today.

A young womans impassioned pursuit of a sealed cache of T. S. Eliots letters lies at the heart of this emotionally charged novel -- a story of marriage and madness, of faith and desire, of jazz-age New York and Europe in the shadow of the Holocaust. The Archivist was a word-of-mouth bestseller and one of the most jubilantly acclaimed first novels of recent years.

"[A] splendid and subtle memoir in essays" The New York Times Book ReviewHaving lost eight friends in ten years, Cooley retreats to a tiny medieval village in Italy with her husband. There, in a rural paradise where bumblebees nest in the ancient cemetery and stray cats curl up on her bed, she examines a question both easily evaded and unavoidable: mortality. How do we grieve? How do we go on drinking our morning coffee, loving our life partners, stumbling through a world of such confusing, exquisite beauty?Linking the essays is Cooleys escalating understanding of another loss on the way, that of her ailing mother back in the States. Blind since Cooleys childhood, her mother relies on dry wit to ward off grief and pity. There seems no way for the two of them to discuss her impending death. But somehow, by the end, Cooley finds the words, each one graceful and wrenching.Part memoir, part loving goodbye to an unconventional parent, Guesswork transforms a year in a pastoral hill town into a fierce examination of life, love, death, and, ultimately, release.

A collection of searching, curious, and surprising essays catalyzed by the authors move in her sixties to a small Italian village, exploring selfhood, coincidence, inheritance, and the impermanence of identityIn 2021, in her mid-sixties, Martha Cooley moved with her husband from the United States to Castiglione del Terziere, a village in northernmost Tuscany. Prompted by this relocation, the essays in My Little Donkey chronicle her encounters with people, animals, the past, and herself as she reckons with the fallout of a major life-change. Following curiosity where it leads, Cooley delves into music and silence, the vagaries of history, the complexity of familial legacies, and the presence and power of animals in human lives. With its spirited examinations of uncanny coincidences and chance events, My Little Donkeys varied essays offer the vivid pleasures of story combined with the provocations of a writer looking behind the curtain of appearances, intent on honest assessments of what she sees and feels. Whimsical yet at the same time intellectually and emotionally bold, these essays tackle the conundrum of times passage: how to adapt, pay attention, embrace contradiction, and enjoy the ride?