You Tell the Stories You Need to Believe collects a series of short, introspective essays that Rebecca Brown (decorated author of The Gifts of the Body) wrote for Seattle's alternative newspaper The Stranger between 2014 and 2016. Each of the four essays considers a single season of the year from several vantage points--memories, music, mythology, poetry, psychology--which she ruminates on with candor, solidarity and humor. "Whenever I hear the opening of 'Spring,' from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons," she admits, "I want to scream."
No one escapes the rhythms of time, and Brown's prose carries an expansive yet steadfast sense of calm in the face of the inexorable, recognizing that what is refreshing for some may be stifling to others. While hot weather may invite plenty of people to sunbathe on beaches, Brown knows that "in summer you didn't see certain people--only the people you didn't feel ugly around." What further elevates this wise, cleansing meditation on seasons is the clarity of perspective that Brown exhibits in her afterword, written in 2021; she holds the devastating events of recent years in tension with an urgent dare for readers--and herself--to hope in new, more restful times ahead. "Maybe like how in the winter it's hard to imagine spring," she muses, "I forgot there was anything else besides despair. I needed--I need--to remember the seasons change."
Both timely and timeless, You Tell the Stories You Need to Believe is a gift, one appropriate for all occasions. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness