The Dry Season: A Memoir (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780593537237)

From the national best-selling author of Girlhood, an examination of the solitude, freedoms, and feminist heroes Melissa Febos discovered during a year of celibacy. A wise and transformative look at relationships and self-knowledge.

In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break--for three months she would abstain from dating, from relationships, even from casual sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Febos, it was. Ever since her teens, she had been in one relationship after another. As she puts it, she could trace a "daisy chain of romances" from her adolescence to her mid-thirties. Finally, she would carve out time to focus on herself and examine the lifelong patterns that had produced her midlife disaster. Over those first few months, she gleaned insights into her past and awoke to the joys of being single. She decided to extend her celibacy not knowing it would become the most fulfilling and sensual year of her life. No longer defined by her romantic pursuits, she learned to relish the delights of solitude, the thrill of living on her own terms, the sensual pleasures unmediated by lovers, and the freedom to pursue her ideals without distraction or guilt. Bringing her own celibate experiences into conversation with those of women throughout history--from Hildegard von Bingen, Virginia Woolf, and Audre Lorde to the Shakers and the radical feminist group Cell 16--Febos explores how women's decisions to forego sexual intimacy with others, and particularly with men, became a route to freedoms that would otherwise have been inaccessible.

By abstaining from all forms of romantic entanglement, Febos began to see her life and her self-worth in a radical new way. Her year of divestment transformed her relationships with friends and peers, her spirituality, her creative practice, and most of all her relationship to herself. The Dry Season is a memoir of celibacy, but ultimately it is also a profound exploration of independence, sexuality, and deep self-knowledge.

Author: Melissa Febos
ISBN-10: 0593537238
ISBN-13: 9780593537237
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Language: English
Published: 06/03/2025
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.24lbs
Size: 9.25h x 6.13w x 0.81d