TRYING

'In Trying, Caldwell begins and ends alone. A process of creation is thwarted. She repeats the cycle over and over until a rupture ensures it cannot be repeated again. When I finished reading the book, I began it again. I found pleasure in the limbo, in the between. I wanted to be in Caldwell's language forever'
- LA Warman, author of Dust and Whore Foods  

'Caldwell's compact and wide-ranging musings are wry, surprising, and fresh'
- Amy Fusselman, author of The Means  

'A sly memoir of self-discovery and loss. It is an ode to the countless ways that we try: to love, to forgive, to heal, to parent, to grieve, to rebuild a life. What a humane and vulnerable book'
- Isle McElroy, author of People Collide  

'Trying meets the reader at the intersection of fertility, creativity, and desire-I read it in long bursts, finding it nearly impossible to put down. Caldwell's writing is often profound and frequently electric-I loved this book'
- Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else  

'Trying reads like poetry and feels like a conversation with your coolest friend. In breaking the "rules" of memoir, Caldwell has created something much greater. An extraordinary book'
- Molly Roden Winter, author of More: A Memoir of Open Marriage  

'Trying becomes more about surrendering to the truth of her marriage's implosion while embracing her own infinite potential outside of timeworn heterosexual norms... Her writing slaps, and readers like it... Certain to produce many more books, Caldwell shows readers how to endure catastrophe with aplomb; there can be no better recommendation for literature'
- Washington Post 

'A focus on language runs like a gold thread through Trying, Caldwell's most condensed, structured, and technically interesting book... Confessional writing at its best'
- Brooklyn Rail 

'Caldwell's 2014 novella Women... became a queer cult classic. In Trying, the writer again uses the fragmentary form, candor and wit to study "the brain of someone trying to get pregnant"'
- Vulture