Dawn Davies

""Mothers of Sparta is a superbly written book, at times gently poetic, at times devastating. I was spellbound from start to finish." -Tim O'Brien "Beautiful and painful all at once. A heartbreakingly honest book that I couldn't put down." - Jenny Lawson, #1 NYT bestselling author "In Mothers of Sparta, Dawn Davies writes like an avenging angel. Her stories are poetic, moving, provocative, and bracingly honest as she trains her lucid gaze on some of life's deepest complexities: In the face of terror, betrayal, and impending loss, how do we love? And what does that love cost us? I've never read a book quite like this one, shot through with the light of an extraordinary talent and spirit." -- Dani Shapiro, author of Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage --

A Memoir in Pieces

Mothers of Sparta

“Davies' collection of essays soars.... It's a memoir that locates the profound within the ordinary.” —Entertainment Weekly If you’re looking for a typical parenting book, this is not it. This is not a treatise on how to be a mother. This is a book about a young girl who moves to a new town every couple of years; a misfit teenager who finds solace in a local music scene; an adrift twenty-something who drops out of college to pursue her dream of making cheesecake on a stick a successful business franchise (ah, the ideals of youth). Alone in a new city, she summons her inner strength as she holds the hand of a dying stranger. Davies is a woman who finds humor in difficult pregnancies and post-partum depression (after reading “Pie” you might never eat Thanksgiving dessert the same way). She is a divorcee who unexpectedly finds second love. She is a happily married suburban wife who nevertheless makes a mental list of all the men she would have slept with. And she is a parent who finds herself tested in ways she could never imagine. In stories that cut to the quick, Davies explores passion, loss, illness, pain, and joy, told from her singular, gimlet-eyed, hilarious perspective. Mothers of Sparta is not a blow-by-blow of Davies’ life but rather an examination of the exquisite and often painful moments of a life, the moments we look back on and say, That one, that one mattered. Straddling the fence between humor and, well...not humor, Davies has written a book about what it’s like to try to carve a place for oneself in the world, no matter how unyielding the rock can be.

Chelsea Hodson

Jerald Walker

Jess Stoner

Catherine Carberry

Adam Ortman

Courtney Preiss

Alexandra Tanner

Jess Williard

Dawna Kemper

The Austin Review. Built by Literati. True Things. And Lies. The Austin Review is an independent, nonprofit literary journal featuring contemporary fiction and creative, flash nonfiction. This fourth issue of The Austin Review features ten works.

The Austin Review

Dawn Davies

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