Advance Praise
"The essays in Marrow Memory dazzled and moved me with their erudition and sensuousness, their humour and their breadth in subject. Whether it’s writing about Tay–Sachs disease, life in Communist Poland or her peasant ancestors, Margaret Nowaczyk never once falters in making her personal fascinations feel vital and relevant." – Kevin Chong, author of The Double Life of Benson Yu
"Fascinating, sensitive and wholly absorbing, these essays explore the mechanics of memory, how memory not only fixes events in time, but also alters those events into story. Margaret Nowaczyk incorporates her scientific background and her precise imagination to bring us these deep and multi-layered excursions into her past and those of her patients. The result is a rich and rewarding journey to the present." – Wayne Grady, author of The Good Father
“Marrow Memory is sinewy, sharp and seductive. Margaret Nowaczyk’s new collection of essays meditates on everything from molecules, monsters and medical school to the marvels of the everyday – from the miracle of each tiny membrane of the ear vibrating to take in late-night transistor radio waves from a childhood bedroom in Communist Poland to the pleasures and pains of sexual freedom to the hues of blue in Matisse’s Tahitian seascapes. With a geneticist’s eye for uncanny detail, the marrow at the root of family and selfhood is revealed with grit and grace. How is a human made? this collection asks, as the speaker pours over anatomy textbooks, assesses infant genetic disparities and recognizes her own familiar whorls of DNA in the pleasure of perfectly laundered sheets, the teal-and-orange colour of the Beck taxi her father drives through a 1980s’ Toronto recession as a new immigrant and her sons’ long strides through the grasses of her ancestors’ fields. This collection models the alchemy of what the personal essay does best – through the stories of another’s unfamiliar life, the reader finds affinity.” – Heather Jessup, author of This Is Not a Hoax: Unsettling Truth in Canadian Culture and The Lightning Field
"These essays shine with candour and insight. In lively prose, rich with empathy and detail, Margaret Nowaczyk recounts moments of discovery in her life as a daughter, lover, mother, geneticist, reader, traveller, writer and seeker. Marrow Memory finds beauty in the heart of the familiar and the extraordinary, revealing the essence of a memorable life." – Lorri Neilsen Glenn, author of Following the River: Traces of Red River Women
