Praise for Second Person, Possessive

praise for Second Person, Possessive

 William Henderson’s Second Person, Possessive is a brutally honest memoir that is at times harrowing, poignant and heartbreaking, yet always compelling. I expect we will hear more from this exceptional writer in the future.

Paul Alan Fahey, ed. The Other Man: 21 Writers Speak Candidly About Sex, Love, Infidelity, & Moving On

Second Person, Possessive illuminates life’s most intense moments of love, heartbreak, and madness. Written with unflinching clarity, Henderson ties a knot you have to keep reading to unravel. His voice urges understanding of himself, life and all those he loves.

Noriko Nakada, author of Through Eyes Like Mine and Overdue Apologies

William Henderson knows intimately that there are truths in contradiction and that there are always (at least) two sides of a story. Second Person Possessive is a gripping story that does what I love best in literature: wrestles with shadow, cuts to the quick, and deepens my understanding of the messy complexity of human relationships. This is a book you will be compelled to read in one sitting, a book you’ll think about many days after you’ve finished. Prepare to descend.

Wendy C. Ortiz, author of Hollywood Notebook

Second Person Possessive is a haunting exploration into the idea of weaving: to negotiate the creation of unexpected worlds and desires, the insertion of lives into other lives. Will serves as author and interlacer of this memoir—the characters here must be stitched together and it is up to Will to do it: through delicate thread, through glue, through lies, through addiction, through love that is both abundant and scarce. This is a story of trying to share a life with others while the world, as well as inner anxieties, want to keep things quiet. The result is harrowing and beautiful—an attempt to reinvent a life while simultaneously trying to reinvent what it means to be a lover, a father, a human being.

Brian Oliu, author of Level End and So You Know It’s Me

Second Person Possessive is proof that life can become a carnival of chaos, how we steer ahead with only our hearts and how the universe can throw sucker punches. This debut is expertly crafted and quite perfect in many ways, quite unlike you and I.

Michael Graves, author of Dirty One

You’ll read this book and you’ll find yourself stripping it down layer by layer. First, you will pull apart the individual pieces, and there you will find honesty. Then you will pull apart the sentences, and in them you will find painstaking clarity. And then you will get down to each and every raw, often agonizing word, and there you will find William Henderson, a rich and crushing storyteller. This is the memoir to consume slowly, and again and again.

Andrew Keating, author of Participants