The Last Year

<p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The moments that change us the ghosts that follow us the memories that slow us down or keep us afloat - Jill Talbot has found the language for all of that. Talbot a longtime single mother hopes she was enough as she prepares to launch her daughter into the world. Anyone who has ever loved a child will recognize themselves in her mirror. I didn't want this book to end. - Connie Schultz Pulitzer Prize-winning author of </span><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The Daughters of Erietown</em></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>In </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The Last Year</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> Jill Talbot turns the small things sacred distilling the quiet moments between a mother and daughter into something veering toward revelation.  Each page reminds us that the greatest dramas of our lives often go unnoticed-unless we do the noticing. Part epiphany part elegy all love.  This book is a small mercy.  Its gift is grace.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>- B.J. Hollars </span><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>author of </span><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Go West Young Man: A Father and Son Rediscover America on the Oregon Trail</em></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>In </span><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The Last Year </em><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Jill Talbot achieves that rare magic that can exist in the finest examples of the essay form: she captures the ecstatic mysterious fullness of life in each moment. These missives are about so many things - parenthood grief fear pain joy art. Every sentence carries the weight of the past the breathless potential of the future. Every detail is loaded with honesty introspection and above all else care. To read it to bear witness to this mother/daughter relationship as Talbot stands on the precipice of enormous change is a gift.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> - Lucas Mann author of </span><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Captive Audience: On Love and Reality TV</em></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Jill Talbot's </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The Last Year</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> is an evocative and heart wrenching portrait of her final days living with her daughter Indie who's about to leave home for university - just as the world begins to shut down in the face of the Covid19 pandemic. Across a series of deftly crafted essays Talbot's prose draws lasting images of a precarious life of her and her daughter on the road as they relocate from one short term academic posting to another. Talbot proves to be a great American chronicler like the passing moments of life caught by the Leica of beat photographer Robert Frank in The Americans </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The Last Year</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> elevates fleeting and ephemeral moments a favourite booth in a bar a view from a front doorstep an empty flat left behind to a profound view of what makes us who we are.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>- </span><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Felicity Jones Actress and Producer</span></p>