It seems terribly inadequate to call "Dear Sugar" an advice column, because it exists in a category all its own--as thousands of readers of Cheryl Strayed's pseudonymous biweekly column at the literary website The Rumpus can attest. Part memoir, part essay collection, the aptly titled Tiny Beautiful Things gathers together stunningly written pieces on everything from sex and love to the agonies of bereavement.
Line by line, Strayed offers insights as exquisitely phrased as they are powerful. To college graduates at their commencement, in a column titled "The Future Has an Ancient Heart," she writes, "The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will."
A noteworthy theme throughout the column is Strayed's courage in confronting some of the biggest and most painful of life's questions. Among the people who write to "Dear Sugar" are a father whose only son was killed at 22 by a drunk driver, a woman who lost her baby and another woman whose infant is about to be operated on for a brain tumor. In her responses, Strayed shines a torch of insight and comfort into the darkness of these people's lives, cutting to the heart of what it means to love, to grieve and to suffer. Writing to the bereaved father, Strayed describes her own grief at the loss of her mother--a theme in all her work, including her memoir, Wild--and the "obliterated place" the loss created. Then, she tells us, "Sugar is the temple I built in my obliterated place."
The implication is that the power of Strayed's column, and her courage to confront darkness, come from a previous, intense experience of annihilation. Perhaps it is for that reason that reading "Dear Sugar" can be such an emotionally grueling experience--when Strayed is at her best, the reader is, in some sense, obliterated. --Ilana Teitelbaum, book reviewer at the Huffington Post
Shelf Talker: A stunningly written collection of essays on life, love, sex and death by the author of the bestselling memoir Wild.