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Start giftingThe Crane Wife
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBrought to you by Penguin.
Ten days after calling off her wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, she realised she had almost signed up to live somebody else's life.
In this intimate, frank and funny memoir in essays, CJ Hauser lets go of 'how life was supposed to be' and goes looking for more honest ways of living. She kisses internet strangers, officiates a wedding, visits a fertility clinic. She reads Rebecca in the house her new boyfriend shared with his ex-wife and rewinds Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story to ask if you can ever have a fresh start with an old love. She writes about friends and lovers, grief and heartbreak, blood family and chosen family, and asks what more expansive definitions of love might offer us all.
The Crane Wife is a book for anyone whose life doesn't look the way they thought it would; for anyone trying, if sometimes failing, to find joy in the unexpected.
'Outstanding' Roxane Gay
'Funny, exciting, vulnerable - truly visionary' Alexander Chee
'What a fantastic, original, funny and touching voice! C J Hauser is a wondrous writer. This book will give so much happiness.' CRESSIDA CONNOLLY, author of AFTER THE PARTY
'Brilliant and beautiful... An absolute must-read' FRANCES CHA, author of IF I HAD YOUR FACE
'Compassionate and funny and brave. CJ is a master story weaver. I was left wanting more, in the best way possible.' CHARLIE GILMOUR, author of FEATHERHOOD
'A thrillingly original deconstruction of desire and its many configurations' Publishers Weekly
'Bold and brilliant and psychologically exquisite, CJ Hauser is a deeply gifted and generous writer. THE CRANE WIFE is enthralling.' CHARLOTTE FOX WEBER, author of WHAT WE WANT
© Christina Joyce Hauser 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
CJ HAUSER teaches creative writing at Colgate University and lives in Hamilton, NY. They received their MFA from Brooklyn College and PhD from Florida State. They have published two novels, Family of Origin and The From-Aways. In 2019 they published a viral essay, The Crane Wife, in the Paris Review, about their decision to call off their wedding and go on an expedition to study the whooping crane. The essay reached over a million readers, was shared by 538 journalists from 293 different outlets all over the world, and recommended online by the likes of Roxane Gay, Busy Phillips and Caitlin Moran. The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays is their first work of full-length non-fiction.