‘A small book with a big heart, A Little Give re-humanises those household chores that fall to women — cleaning, cooking, picking up after others, caring for elders, the constant emotional labour involved — and lights up the meaning of dailiness.’
Beth Macy, author of Dopesick and Raising Lazarus
‘With its unfailing attentiveness to the sensory and emotional textures of everyday life, Marina Benjamin’s beautiful writing feels like a model of good care. A wry, absorbing, and very moving book.’
Josh Cohen, author of How to Live. What to Do
‘A wonderful, insightful, absorbing account of the work women do and the roles they inhabit (or which inhabit them). How do the competing claims of care for others and personal freedom shape us? Benjamin is brilliant at evoking the everyday and the unspoken, those most intimate moments that are often left out of the public idea of a life — the time spent cleaning a floor, grooming a dog, lingering in the empty bedroom of a child who has departed for college. No one writes more movingly, or with more intellectual breadth and incisiveness, about the lived experiences of women.’
Sandra Newman, author of The Heavens
‘Brave and curious, an examination of what it means to live and care.’
Emilie Pine, author of Notes to Self
‘A wonderful memoir by one of my favourite contemporary writers and thinkers.’
Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance and Signal Fires
‘Personal and lyrical.’
The Irish Times
‘We all know the existential funk that housework can incite, women more so than men as they have traditionally carried the load. Not to mention the mixed emotions that go with caring for others. Marina Benjamin ruminates on the historical and societal pressures, constraints and value of this work through the lens of her own Iraqi-Jewish family – her dynamic, frustrated mother who drummed into her that “women were put on this planet to please” and her creative father who didn’t question that being looked after was his due. No simple solutions are offered. Instead, she rewardingly riffs on the visceral push and pull of this work.’
Cameron Woodhead, The Sydney Morning Herald
‘Marina Benjamin writes with a frankness, depth and wisdom…In A Little Give, she turns her exacting philosopher’s mind, and opens her capacious heart to, her own life … [an] erudite and thought-provoking book … A Little Give is a memoir, but it can also be read as a manifesto for living in greater ease with change and decay, which is metamorphosis, which is life itself.’
Margie Oxford, The Spectator
‘A Little Give is one of those books that reorients our sense of how society is ordered. Its interlinked pieces take another look at those human tasks traditionally designated as “women’s work” and recasts them as profound and essential acts of labour and love.’
Geordie Williamson, The Australian
‘Benjamin's overriding mission … is to render the invisible visible … As I read A Little Give, my thoughts kept returning to the performance art projects carried out by Mierle Laderman Ukeles throughout the 1970s. In one, she shook hands with 8,500 sanitation workers, thanking them for “keeping New York City alive”. In another, she washed the steps at the entrance to the Wadsworth Atheneum museum in Hartford, Connecticut, rendering visible the work of low-paid custodial staff. Her point was that maintenance is undervalued. Benjamin's thoughtful book demonstrates the many ways in which it still is.’
Amy Walters, The Canberra Times
‘Editor, journalist, and memoirist Benjamin meditates on feminism, family, and women’s work in a series of linked essays that cohere into a thoughtful reflection on the trajectory of her life … An intimate and powerfully written look at women’s lives.’
Kirkus Reviews
‘This book separates itself from the others in its specific concentration on the domestic work of women … Especially well-suited for women seeking validation regarding the daily labours of love, or those seeking another source of political writing about the division of labour following Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play. Ideal for libraries that house Benjamin’s first two installments, as well as those where titles regarding women’s rights and injustices are needed.’
Library Journal
‘Marina Benjamin can take the everyday … and transform it into deeply affecting prose.’
Francesca Brown, Stylist
‘[An] exquisite book … Benjamin’s essays investigate the social and philosophical dimensions of housework, tracing the fine filaments that bind women to a system of gender inequality … It zigzags between memory, discovery and reflection, taking the reader to the heart of the essay form. It is a journeying style of writing that constantly drives at its ideas without needing to be sure of their endpoints; it expects a question, not an answer.’
Camilla Nelson, The Conversation
‘Energetic and thought-provoking.’
Vicki Renner, ArtsHub
‘Any one of these beautifully written and enlightening essays could have been a book in itself.’
Catherine Taylor, Brixton Review of Books
‘It’s a book you can sink into and return to, for the wisdom of its reflection and the beauty of its sentences.’
Jo Case, InDaily
‘Marina Benjamin’s powerful, poetic essays reaffirm the vital role of women’s work in building homes, lives, and worlds. Essential reading in these culturally fractious times.’
Silvia Federici, scholar, teacher, and feminist activist
‘Stunning … I inhaled this book.’
Sam Baker, The Shift podcast
‘[A] warm, engaging work, no matter the reader's gender.’
Red Tape
‘Elegant and elegiac.’
Shyamantha Asokan, Working Mums
Praise for Insomnia:
‘A darkly thrilling beauty of a book … Benjamin’s talent is Arachne-like. The materials she integrates are eclectic, and the resulting constructed web of her thoughts is architecturally robust and resplendent with dazzling prose.’
Tali Lavi, Australian Book Review
Praise for Insomnia:
‘A short, ludic book about long white nights ... [Benjamin] writes feelingly about the frustrations of being awake when you don’t want to be ... Her moans about her futile thought-loops alternate with flattering descriptions of her radiant nocturnal consciousness.’
Zoë Heller, The New Yorker
Praise for The Middlepause:
‘Lucid and sophisticated … A restrained but wonderful guide to the convulsive changes of 50 and over … This is a book that yields valuable insights on almost every page.’
Melissa Benn, The Guardian
