Book Review: Writings of a Wild Woman - Cover Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
When it comes to reading short stories, there’s somethings that I want to look for: does the book tell enough of a story with so few pages? Is there enough emotion to make me want to go back and tell people about it? Has the author managed to wrap up everything they needed to? And in the case of Writings of a Wild Woman by Kelsea Cole, the answer was yes.
Kelsea’s book was like a rollercoaster of both uncomfortable and relatable emotions. She takes us through three different sections of her life, beautifully curated in bite-sized pieces. Many of the topics covered in the Writings of a Wild Woman are, as mentioned, relatable, and I think this is what made it such an enjoyable read for myself. When I look around to others who may have gone through similar experiences in growing up, some can be very daunting to read in length, so it was a breath of fresh air to be able to take this in at my own pace.
This book was a beautiful and easy read, coming in at 111 pages – you can devour it in one sitting if you so desire. I chose not to and read it over a few days. Writings of a Wild Woman does contain material that may be distressing for some readers, (myself included) however, I think if you’re reading this as someone who wants to believe that hope is on its way – that there is a better tomorrow, then the material is something you can workaround. Being that most of the book is derived of individual poems, some only a line or two long, you don’t have that same burden that can occur in full-length publication to force you to keep reading.
Writings of a Wild Woman is something that you want to go back and read through. Even when some of the themes became uncomfortable, when sometimes I needed to step back – I kept coming back to it. I’ve visited the book a number of times and still enjoy re-reading the pieces.
My only complaint that I have comes from personal taste. Where when it comes to capitalizing every line is unnecessary and for me personally, this is just a small frustration in the world of poetry. Partway throughout the mid-section of the book, this changes to a more flowed approach which I was extremely excited over but reverts towards the final chapters which were a downer. However, if this is the only complaint I can come up with the whole book – then I think we can all agree Kelsea has a good thing going here.
When I look back at my life over the past 10 years, I know that I wish I kept all the snippets of writings that I created to get a glimpse back of what I’d been through. Whilst in a fit of anger, this will no longer ever be the case, Kelsea Cole’s new novella, Writings of a Wild Woman, absolutely captures beautifully, and in some cases quite painfully, a life that I know that I too have experienced.
I would recommend this book to anyone who has experienced pain in their life or is just looking for a gorgeous collection of personal poetry. I'd give this a 4 out of 5, and would read again!
You can buy Writings of a Wild Woman via Amazon.
Paige Eades
This sounds lovely – and I like how you could sit and read it all in one if you wanted to!
Paige // Paige Eades
Elizabeth Hartley
Wow this sounds so interesting! Definitely something I think I would love to read and be able to revisit whenever you wanted to.