"Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story" by Leslie Jamison

A self-confronting memoir that inspired me

Mar 09, 2025

In Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison, we follow Jamison’s divorce through an invitation into motherhood—being mothered and being a mother—, her friendships, her addictions, her father wound, and her romantic relationships before her marriage, during her marriage, and after her divorce.

First and foremost, this is a beautifully written memoir. You can see that Jamison is incredibly contemplative, self-aware, and an artist.

Here are some lines I enjoyed:

From the chapter “Milk”

Somehow I preferred the version of myself that cried when [my new born baby]” left to the version of myself that reached for my laptop when she was gone.
Somehow. As if I hadn’t been conditioned to feel precisely this guilt.

From the chapter “Smoke”

[My therapist and I] started to talk about the ways my closeness with my mother had subconsciously felt contingent on the absence of my father. Maybe I wanted to re-create the absence because I thought it was the only way my presence could feel as total to my daughter as my mother’s presence had felt to me. I recounted these insights breathlessly to friends.
“Yep,” they said, nodding. “That’s what therapy is for.”
It was like finding a pair of lost keys sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. Right in front of me the whole time.

From the chapter “Fever”

The only thing the ex-philosopher and my ex-husband had in common was that both of them invited me to live in the story of our relationship rather than its daily texture. Saving the widower from his grief. Saving the ex-philosopher from the vacuum of his finance life.
This was one of the lessons I kept learning: the difference between the story of love and the texture of living it; between the story ofmotherhood and the texture of living it, the story of addiction and the texture of living it, the story of empathy and the texture of living it.

Jamison’s contemplations and metaphors remind me of my own. I felt a kinship with her writing…and a kinship with her not enoughness, expressed through her desire to be wanted by men and to save them.

Yet throughout the memoir, there was a Bechdel test of the unconditionally loving relationship she had with her mom, her girlfriends, her daughter, art, and her work….but none of these could escape the backdrop of men. I don’t think she failed the test. Rather, she proved that patriarchy is omnipresent, insidiously objectifying women, and we try to prove we aren’t objects by becoming them—by living out the story and hiding from the texture.

cover or Splinters by Leslie Jamison. it has a red background with collaged pictures that represent the book.

Jamison’s relationships post divorce had me wanting to reach into the book and yell “STOP ADJUSTING AND PROVING YOURSELF,” because I clearly have struggled with the same.

It made me cringe because I saw myself in it. Good writing stings.

As someone who is childfree by choice, I found the intergenerational maternal love to be endearing, not pushy. I was a little jealous, but mostly in awe, of Jamison’s loving and reciprocal relationship with her mother. I felt invested in this lineage, and I secretly want Jamison’s daughter to write a future memoir. I think this relationship is an incredibly defining theme of the book: how maternal characteristics constantly show up and nurture whether you’re a friend, a mother, a writer, or an artist, while we reconcile our desire to be validated by men.

This is something I’ll be grappling with in my memoir but from a different angle. I cannot say I felt this type of relationship with my mom growing up, but I can say it was unconditionally loving. It presents another different love story that endures while making me wonder if my father wound is deeper than I give it credit for.

I was very impressed with how honestly and graciously Jamison writes about her dad and her ex-husband. You sense her anger and disappointment, but it never feels like blame. I hope to write this responsibly in my memoir, even if it comes from a place of uncertainty.

Lastly, I loved how Jamison’s museum visits were like characters in the book. She seamlessly connects art and artists to her lifegoings, and it showed me how much she is not only a witness to art but how it might color the stories and textures she is invited, or invites herself, into.

Overall, this was a beautiful relational examination on Jamison’s life: the messiness, the beauty, the yearnings, and the realities. It is whole, and while memoir can never include everything, she took these splinters and painted a picture.

Have you read this? Comment with your thoughts!

"Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story" by Leslie Jamison

A self-confronting memoir that inspired me

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