When Febos stops looking through the keyhole and turns around, she finds that being single feels like anything but a dry season; it’s the most emotionally and spiritually fertile time of her life ... I want to believe this is enough: that if you’re intentional, you can be someone’s partner without losing any of yourself. I’m not sure I do ... Thoughtfully argued.
Febos’s great power as a writer is pairing structural rigor with emotional disclosure ... Febos has venerated literary ancestors while scrutinizing her own choices. Some might deride attention to personal experience and sexual pleasure while our democracy disintegrates around us, but sex and love are energies that turn us toward each other in an era whose ravages are designed to create lasting isolation.
Philosophically rich and deeply sensual ... At first, it seems Ms. Febos’s interest is primarily in the feminist potential of women choosing to live without men, focusing instead on themselves and one another. But as her book progresses, the author spends more and more time on the relationship between religious and sexual hunger, and the human need to subsume ourselves in something greater.
Febos is far from the first woman to have pledged celibacy, and she structures her memoir round stories of those who came before her ... Less welcome, though, are the metaphors ... Becomes too theoretical ... However, in the dating apps era when the taunting promise of romance is ever present, it’s always refreshing to read about someone who turns away.
The final product—which has been lauded as a timely entry in a 'feminist Zeitgeist'— feels less like a sweeping cultural statement and more like a small exercise in self-improvement ... there are so many upsides to Febos’s celibacy that her experiment feels frictionless. She both has no problem being alone and no shortage of desirable people who want to sleep with her.
The astonishing clarity with which Febos has previously written about sex work, addiction, love, and misogyny continues to scaffold new insights as she scrutinizes her romantic and sexual past. Looking back, she recognizes her inability to tolerate disappointing others; her inclination toward people-pleasing spills quickly into self-abandonment or using others. Her insights are not limited to the realm of intimacy, for Febos comes to understand that her talents for seduction and flattery have also been powerful tools in her work as a restaurant server and a dominatrix. Notably, she highlights that in her more recent work as an educator these skills are used to enamor her students with the subject matter rather than with herself to extract compensation. Many moments when reading, the posture of Febos’s prose struck me as so erect, her vision so clear-sighted that the truths she relays made me wince, insisting I turn toward the blinding glare of my own self-reflection ... With her sharp feminist perspective, Febos examines instances when she wavers in her resolution to forgo sex, inviting readers to attune to the more granular ways being socialized as a woman has detrimental effects. She lingers on subtle experiences—like briefly catching another’s gaze or feeling the closeness of another’s hips—that a less observant writer might overlook ... Her discernment here is humbling and beautiful. Febos’s search for herself outside of sexual entanglement leads her into a sacred sense of immanence—reveling in the world around her at every turn.
Febos has written beautifully, brilliantly about her body, mind and that divine light we call, perhaps too simply, the spirit. Her personal narratives about obsession, sex, romance, addiction, art-making and the pressures placed on female bodies are written with candor, brio and compassion for herself and others ... The Dry Season is Febos’ most triumphant book to date ... An exciting chapter in Febos’ story, both for the ways her work continues to grow and for the elation we feel for her liberation.
Searching, cerebral ... A consummate builder of words and conveyer of ideas, Febos’ keen writing about sex, gender, and addiction is in a class of its own.
Although a book about abstention, at its essence this story is about understanding, reclaiming, and celebrating pleasure, rendered sublimely and with wit. A gorgeous and thought-provoking memoir about how celibacy can teach us about love.
Bold ... Febos convincingly makes the case for serial daters to slow down and reflect on their past relationships free from the cloud of a current entanglement. As fascinating as it is liberating, this is not to be missed.
