Book Summary and Reviews of Reckoning by V (formerly Eve Ensler)

Reckoning by V (formerly Eve Ensler)

Reckoning

by V (formerly Eve Ensler)

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Published:
  • Jan 2023, 272 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The work of a lifetime from the Tony Award-winning, bestselling author of The Vagina Monologues - political, personal, profound, and more than forty years in the making.

The newest book from V (formerly Eve Ensler), Reckoning invites you to travel the journey of a writer's and activist's life and process over forty years, representing both the core of ideas that have become global movements and the methods through which V survived abuse and self-hatred. Seamlessly moving from the internal to the external, the personal to the political, Reckoning is a moving and inspiring work of prose, poetry, dreams, letters, and essays drawn from V's lifetime journals that takes readers from Berlin to Oklahoma to Congo, from climate disaster, homelessness, and activism to family.

Unflinching, intimate, introspective, courageous, Reckoning explores ways to create an unstoppable force for change, to love and survive love, to hold people and states accountable, to reckon with demons and honor the dead, to reclaim the body, and to see oneself as connected to a greater purpose. It reimagines what seems fixed and intractable, providing a path to understand one's unique experience as deeply rooted in the world, to break through one's own boundaries, and to write oneself into freedom.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Bracing … V's explosive truth-telling is as provocative as it is intense. The result is a raw and relevant oeuvre." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Riveting … V digs deep to find the words to constructively address sexual atrocities and everyday sexism and their insidious consequences … This far-reaching, deeply affecting collection will garner avid attention and ignite passionate discussion." - Booklist (starred review)

"Deeply felt, thoughtful, and lyrical, [Reckoning] offers a reflection on the connectedness of the personal and political and the need for all humanity to reckon fully with its past in pursuit of a more just world. An elegant and timely book." - Kirkus Reviews

"An electric call to heal our broken world." - Naomi Klein

This information about Reckoning was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

V (formerly Eve Ensler)

V (formerly Eve Ensler) is a Tony Award–winning playwright, author, performer, and activist. Her international phenomenon The Vagina Monologues has been published in 48 languages and performed in more than 140 countries. She is the author of The Apology (now a play set to debut in 2022), the NYT bestseller I Am an Emotional Creature, the highly praised In the Body of the World, and many more. She is the founder of V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls, and One Billion Rising, the largest global mass action to end gender-based violence in over 200 countries. She is a co-founder of the City of Joy, a revolutionary center for women survivors of violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, along with Christine Schuler Deschryver and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Denis Mukwege. She is one of Newsweek's "150 Women Who Changed the World" and the Guardian's "100 Most Influential Women." She lives in New York.

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