A Certain Loneliness: A Memoir

After contracting polio as a child, Sandra Gail Lambert progressed from braces and crutches to a manual wheelchair to a power wheelchair-but loneliness has remained a constant, from the wild claustrophobia of a child in body casts to just yesterday, trapped at home, gasping from pain. A Certain Loneliness is a meditative and engaging memoir-in-essays that explores the intersection of disability, queerness, and female desire with frankness and humor.Lambert presents the adventures of flourishing within a world of uncertain tomorrows: kayaking alone through swamps with alligators; negotiating planes, trains, and ski lifts; scoring free drugs from dangerous men; getting trapped in a too-deep snow drift without crutches. A Certain Loneliness is literature of the body, palpable and present, in which Lambert’s lifelong struggle with isolation and independence-complete with tiresome frustrations, slapstick moments, and grand triumphs-are wound up in the long history of humanity’s relationship to the natural world.

Reviews of A Certain Loneliness: A Memoir

"I have loved Sandra Gail Lambert's stunning and flexible prose for a long time and still was unprepared for the power and searing honesty of her memoir, A Certain Loneliness. This book is an act of tremendous beauty."-Lauren Groff, author of New York Times bestseller Fates and Furies? — Lauren Groff "Having pushed her wheelchair past two hundred alligators, Lambert has written a brilliant and necessary account of a wise and triumphant life as a writer, activist, kayaker, lesbian lover, birder, and survivor of polio. I'm in awe of her gifts."-Carolyn Forche, author of The Country between Us — Carolyn Forche "In these lyrical and elegiac essays, Sandra Lambert traces a profound relationship with nature-both the vanishing nature of the planet and the complex nature of her own philosophy. Her language is moving, intimate, and bracingly honest."-Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of Far from the Tree — Andrew Solomon