“The constellations we see are temporary creations, our effort to draw order and meaning from a mostly unknowable universe, to tell ourselves stories, to guide our way home across oceans.”

I read Molly Wizenberg’s ‘A Homemade Life’ many years ago, so I only have vague recollections of her love of family, food, and falling in love with her husband. So going into The Fixed Stars, the account of her evolving sexuality and dissolution of her marriage, was disorienting. Then again, I think that was sort of the point - those stars aren’t really fixed and can shift into a different pattern, depending on your perspective.

While lyrical, especially when espousing on the cosmos metaphor, this read like a friend sitting down over a bottle of wine and telling her equally ordinary and extraordinary tale of marriage woe. I felt so genuinely happy for her in having the courage to make a life of her choosing. I appreciated her honesty about her privilege, and that she doesn’t have all the answers. None of us do in this world and we should accept the story that people tell about themselves, not one we write for them.