The Fixed Stars

The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg

Nonfiction - Memoir

2020 Dreamscape Media

Narrated by Erin Mallon

Finished on January 15, 2023

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

From a bestselling writer, an intense and moving memoir about changing identity, complex sexuality, and enduring family relationships.

At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but she felt that something inside her had changed irrevocably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we’d like to believe.

Like many of us, Wizenberg had long understood sexual orientation as a stable part of ourselves: we’re “born this way.” Suddenly she realized that her story was more complicated. Who was she, she wondered, if something at her very core could change so radically? The Fixed Stars is a taut, electrifying memoir exploring timely and timeless questions about desire, identity, and the limits and possibilities of family. In honest and searing prose, Wizenberg forges a new path: through the murk of separation and divorce, coming out to family and friends, learning to co-parent a young child, and realizing a new vision of love. The result is a frank and moving story about letting go of rigid definitions and ideals that no longer fit, and learning instead who we really are.

Unlike Molly Wizenberg's previous memoirs,  A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table and Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage (both of which I read in December 2021), The Fixed Stars is more about sexuality and identity rather than a foodie memoir filled with recipes and life as a restaurant entrepreneur. Wizenberg (whose books are articulate and highly readable) weaves her story with anecdotes from her earlier life as a wife and mother with that of her new family (also as a wife and a mother). The memoir is not simply a navel-gazing tell-all, but an honest and intimate examination of one woman's experience, interspersed with beautiful metaphors, quotes from poets & authors, and multiple references to studies on sexuality and gender. All of these not only add validity and truth to Wizenberg's experience, but also give voice to that of others in similar situations. 

So many of my favorite blogs are now defunct, including Molly's blog (Orangette), which has now been replaced with I've Got a Feeling (a Substack newsletter). I've recently subscribed and discovered that there's at least a year's worth of articles to peruse. I'm hoping that some will include recipes, which Orangette was so well known for.

I listened to the audio version of the book and Erin Mallon does an outstanding job narrating Wizenberg's story. Had I not known that Mallon was the reader, I would have bet the author was reading her own work; her honesty and emotions ring true.

Thank you Libro.fm for the complimentary copy.

“Wizenberg writes with a remarkable openness about being true to herself and to others, and gives those looking to understand the complicated issue of sexuality a compassionate example of the many forms that love takes. This honest and moving memoir will enlighten and educate those seeking to understand their true selves.” — Publishers Weekly