Phosphorescence

Praise

“Julia Baird is an alchemist, turning the dross of her life’s harshest blows into shimmering prose. Ravaged by a broken heart and debilitating cancer, she undertakes a careful examination of what might yet sustain her. Both timeless and timely, this is a book of wisdom and wonder.”—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of March and Caleb’s Crossing

“Julia Baird’s glorious and gorgeous memoir glows with wisdom and glitters with merriment. This beautiful book is a light in the darkness.”—Sy Montgomery, author of How to Be a Good Creature

“This book is a love letter to the world by a brilliant writer who nearly left it. Julia Baird has gone into the depths of human experience—her own, and others’—and come back with this luminous and profound celebration of people and the planet. Phosphorescence is a treasure to read and re-read your whole life.”—Anna Funder, author of All That I Am and Stasiland

“I loved this book. A cupped hand full of light in a darkened world. A collection of glittering curios. I’ll hold it close in trying times.”—Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment

“Phosphorescence is that rare thing: a book that reminds the reader that change is possible, and that hope is not a luxury but an imperative. Compassionate, expansive, and rigorous, it is a marvel.”—James Bradley, author of The Resurrectionist

“This book is beautiful. It is absolutely my kind of book. A book of tough hope. A light in the dark. A thing of beauty. Phosphorescence itself. [Julia Baird] has been to the tough edges and gives us light. She writes like a dream. Life, nature, hope. You should treat yourself.”—Matt Haig, author of The Midnight Library

“Emotional, introspective . . . It’s impossible to read this book and not sense a shift in one’s thinking about happiness, joy, and a range of other emotions.”—Kirkus Reviews

“[A] poignant combination of self-help, memoir, and scholarly enlightenment . . . Baird brings a shimmering intimacy to a universal condition, a beacon of light that both blazes with intensity and bathes with comforting reassurance.”—Booklist