Lucas Mann turns his attention, tenderness, self-reflection, and humor to contemporary fatherhood. He looks closely at all the joys, frustrations, subtleties, and contradictions within an experience that often goes under-discussed. At once intimate and expansive, Mann chronicles his own life with his young daughter, but also looks outward to the cultural and political baggage that surrounds and permeates these everyday experiences. Moving through memoir, lyric essay, literary analysis, and pop culture criticism, Attachments treats the subject of fatherhood with the depth, curiosity, and vivid emotion that it deserves.
鈥淢ann capably navigates the intricacies of cultural expectations and archetypes, global concerns, and his personal history. . . . He consistently offers sublime reflections on the nuances of parent-child relationships. A heartfelt, perceptive, profoundly introspective journey into the realm of parenthood.鈥濃Kirkus, starred review
鈥Attachments is an intelligent and searching exploration of vulnerability in all its forms. Lucas Mann鈥檚 essays attain a naturalness of form without ever losing their penetrating insight and gorgeous sensibility. Some books punish as they reveal, but Mann鈥檚 generosity and clarity of vision, his humor and candor, make revelation into an occasion for connection. I was flattened and changed by this book. Simply beautiful.鈥濃擝randon Taylor, author, Filthy Animals
鈥淟耻肠补蝉 Mann's Attachments works itself into the fleshy folds I鈥檝e spent most of my life avoiding. The writing and vision are somehow welcoming and spectacular, yet the book鈥檚 greatest achievement might lay within the portals of entry created by Mann鈥檚 use of the comic. Attachments found me at the perfect time in my life.鈥濃擪iese Laymon, author, Heavy: An American Memoir
鈥淭he essays in Lucas Mann鈥檚 Attachments are fierce and funny and agile, following the so-called 鈥榮mallest鈥 moments of daily experience to the subterranean inquiries these moments have always been attached to, about the entanglements between intimacy and transformation, past and prior selves, culture and selfhood. (Which is to say: Come for the playground soap operas, stay for the acute observations about social performance!) Mann鈥檚 interest in attachment itself has to do not just with love but with identity: what versions of ourselves we are most attached to, and what parts of us emerge when we betray these attachments. I love Mann鈥檚 writing for its company and its candor, and especially for its ruthless battle with the twin demons of self-pity and self-satisfaction. His razor gaze slices through righteousness like a mandolin鈥檚 blade slivers fruit; exposing those wry, quick-silver feelings鈥攐ften embarrassing, always illuminating鈥攖ucked into the crevices of the more familiar emotions we are most comfortable making visible, even to ourselves; but always, always the animating engine of this rigor is love.鈥濃擫eslie Jamison, author, The Empathy Exams: Essays
鈥淟耻肠补蝉 Mann鈥檚 insights on the hilarity, devastation, and absolute weirdness of raising a child make this a book I want to discuss with everyone. It鈥檚 so sharp and beautifully written.鈥濃擝eth Nguyen, author, Owner of a Lonely Heart
鈥淟耻肠补蝉 Mann鈥檚 essays are so funny, so endearing, so companionable, so relentless in their quest for self-knowledge and more nuanced, more generous understanding. Attachments reveals a mind that is always working on something, finding ways to make everything interesting, be it fandom or lost promise, social media and 鈥榯he dad space,鈥 comfort TV or sleep training, the 鈥榗lich茅 factory鈥 of parenthood in general. It may be 鈥榠mpossible to feel remarkable in this world,鈥 and yet life, in its particulars, is 鈥榯hrilling鈥欌斺榯hrilling!鈥欌濃擡lisa Gabbert, author, Normal Distance
鈥淣aked and tender, Attachments is an eyes-wide-open exploration of everything that matters. In this twelve-essay collection that spans parenthood, culture, art, and community, Lucas Mann has embraced far-ranging and clear-eyed observation that鈥檚 as astute as is it honest. A special, singular book that invites us all to participate fully in the suffering, beautiful world.鈥濃擱achel Yoder, author, Nightbitch
鈥淭he collection鈥檚 range is stunning. [Mann] tackles body image (both his own and his daughter鈥檚), gender, technology, identity, existential grief, and the specific subgenre that is dad jokes. How we see ourselves in the parents we make fun of, and how鈥攍ike in every other arena鈥攕elf-loathing is the ribbon running through all of our judgments of and disdain for others' choices. . . . It is a book that might do for other fathers what Mann credits Roald Dahl鈥檚 Danny, Champion of the World with doing for him: illustrating a version of fatherhood that feels both positive and possible, rendering the father a solid, stereotype-defying presence in the narrative of a child鈥檚 life. I hope more dads write books about fatherhood; I fear that none may ever be able to match the beauty and vulnerability of this one.鈥濃擧annah Matthews, Romper
鈥淚 loved Attachments. It made me feel, as they say, seen.鈥濃擜ndrew Fleming Petty, Los Angeles Review of Books