Gorgeous, stirring, and deeply probing exploration of what it means to be human in a world that gives us plenty of reasons to feel unsafe—particularly if we are female ... Chilling as these recollections are, it’s Keisner’s ability to conjure life’s more subtle and private forms of terror that makes her writing so powerful ... A kaleidoscopic portrait of a psyche on edge ... Some of the book’s most breathtaking scenes explore how motherhood heightened Keisner’s alertness to life’s fragility ... The greatest triumph of Under My Bed and Other Essays is how masterfully Keisner captures this inescapable tension.
Fresh and intriguing ... Through Keisner’s blend of beautiful prose and the breadth of research she uses to examine her own fears, I found comfort in knowing I’m not alone.
Each essay in Under My Bed is exquisitely structured and beautifully written, the personal substantiated by the factual, and every seeming diversion tying into the overarching theme. Although the author writes perceptively about the predicament of living while female, there were some issues that could have been more fully explored, such as a reflection on the fact that the threat she so feared came from within her own body instead of from the outside, and a much deeper contemplation of how being adopted may have contributed to her anxieties.
