Praise

Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
The Millions, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year

“An eloquent reminder of something we take for granted: that we’re breathing . . . Webster sees her subject everywhere, carefully attuned to all the ways that breath—our various uses of it—fills our everyday lives . . . If there is a running theme, it is that talking—real talking, the giving of oneself through speech—has a value and a meaning beyond the words themselves.” —Dennis Duncan, The Washington Post

“An exploration of what it might mean to think about breathing psychoanalytically, proceeding more impressionistically than argumentatively, more poetically than narratively . . . The forgetting of breath that Webster posits—a forgetting of air, and of our communality—enables us to blithely make breath unbreathable, life unlivable.” —Meghan Racklin, The Brooklyn Rail

“[Webster’s] work possesses an empathy that excites the question at the heart of psychoanalysis: how can one, how can I, live?” —Annette LePique, Newcity Lit

“Thoughtful, poetic . . . Through closer attention to the practice of breathing, Webster believes that we can rebuild broken and fractured connections with our bodies and with each other.” —Booklist

“The narrative boldly attempts to bridge personal memoir with academic discourse, achieving moments of profound insight . . . In examining our relationship with breath in an age of climate crisis and pandemic anxiety, the book offers valuable perspectives on how personal and collective experiences of breathing intersect with broader social and environmental concerns . . . An ambitious meditation.” —Kirkus Reviews

“With its deep care and attention to the most elemental human activity and its strange flows and blockages, On Breathing is a beautifully crafted antidote to our age of chronic bodily alienation and anxiety.” —Josh Cohen, author of How to Live. What to Do: In Search of Ourselves in Life and Literature

“When I read Jamieson Webster, I fall in love with life again. Her deep, calm, wild, and confronting intelligence leaves an essential human fingerprint on a time of fear and catastrophe. We all breathe within this book.” —Deborah Levy, author of Real Estate

“It is very unusual for a book to be at once so lucid and so evocative. In Webster’s hands, breathing becomes endlessly absorbing such that you end up thinking it really is the only issue, in life and then in psychoanalysis—one hiding in plain sight. An amazing feat.” —Adam Phillips, author of On Giving Up