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Can't Even
Can't Even
Oct 5, 2024 11:22 PM

Author:Anne Helen Petersen

Can't Even

An incendiary examination of burnout - what got us here, the pressures that sustain it and the need for drastic change

Are you tired, stressed and trying your best but somehow it's never enough?

Does your job seep into your evenings and your home life creep into your work?

Does the bottom half of your To Do list feel unreachable?

This is burnout and it is affecting how we work, parent, socialise and live.

Through her own experience, original interviews and detailed analysis, Anne Helen Petersen traces the institutional and generational causes of burnout. And, in doing so, she helps us to let go of our guilt and imagine a possible future.

'Genuinely enlightening... Can't Even is a reminder to the burned out generation that things can be different' Observer

Reviews

Meticulously researched... astutely observed... extremely enlightening

—— Guardian

Urgent and insightful book... Read this and get a much-needed perspective

—— Stylist

An intelligent and well-researched analysis... To those born into the same generation, its truth is searing

—— Sunday Times

A readable, well-researched guide to a generation

—— The Times, *Book of the Week*

Relevant to everyone living under capitalism

—— New Statesman

The author is astute in unpicking the many factors that led to a whole generation feeling constantly exhausted... Can't Even is comforting in its insistence that it's not your fault you feel this tired... genuinely enlightening... Can't Even is a reminder to the burned out generation that things can be different

—— Holly Williams , Observer

Whether you're looking for solutions or just looking to feel seen, Can't Even is a can't-miss

—— Harper's Bazaar, "27 Best Books of 2020"

Reading this incredible book, I had the overwhelming feeling of someone arranging the chaotic fragments of my life into a cohesive whole. Can't Even felt like a field guide, a mirror, and an absolution. Compassionate, wise, and incisive, it is a defining work about a generation defined by work

—— Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes

[A] razor sharp book of cultural criticism...With blistering prose and all-too vivid reporting, Petersen lays bare the burnout and despair of millennials, while also charting a path to a world where members of her generation can feel as if the boot has been removed from their necks

—— Esquire

We think of capitalism as a way of organizing an economy. But given enough time, it goes beyond that: It organizes our lives, our hopes, our relationships. Anne Helen Petersen has written an analytically precise, deeply empathic book about the psychic toll modern capitalism has taken on those shaped by it. Can't Even is essential to understanding our age, and ourselves

—— Ezra Klein, Vox co-founder and author of Why We're Polarized

Petersen's third book, a highlight-every-sentence-in-recognition survey of the anxiety and exhaustion baked into the lives of myriad young people, dispels many of the myths and misconceptions-the laziness! the entitlement!-surrounding the generation that came of age amid the internet and economic collapse. Yet rather than pit millennials against boomers, Petersen makes meaningful and constructive connections between the toils and troubles of the two groups

—— O Magazine

A cogent and sober analysis of the economic lives that decades of precarity has wrought, told in Petersen's smart, measured style

—— Tressie McMillan Cottom, author of the National Book Award finalist Thick

Can't Even is a compelling exploration of the phenomenon of burnout and how an entire generation has been set up to fail. As a Millennial, reading this book was a deeply cathartic experience. Anne Helen Petersen articulates the struggles and motivation of a generation so impeccably. Reading this book made me feel like finally, someone understands me. I wish I could give this book to everyone I know

—— Taylor Lorenz, culture reporter, New York Times

Peterson explores how low-paying jobs, overstimulation, and unattainable expectations have contributed to millennial malaise in this trenchant and well-researched account... By turns exasperated, indignant, and empathetic, she supports her claims with strong evidence and calls on millennials to be a force for widespread social change. The result is an incisive portrait of a generation primed for revolt

—— Publisher's Weekly

Can't Even seeks to unearth the root of our generation's angst... Peterson's personal interjections and deft contextualisation of current issues with American history and politics...[and] the toll of the pandemic on our mental health makes her research feel all the more timely

—— Eleanor Halls , Daily Telegraph

*10 books to read in January 2021

—— Washington Post

*A notable book of 2021

—— Behavioral Scientist

*Best new wellness books of January 2021

—— Shape Magazine

A must-read... sharp, funny, it chronicles all of the big decisions a woman is expected to make between the ages of 25-40: where to live, if they should marry, what to do with one's career. And that other biggie: to have a baby or not.

—— Culture Whisper

Ab-definingly funny, The Panic Years captures the female experience perfectly. Discussing all of the large, looming decisions women have to make between their late 20s and early 40s, this is a must-read.

—— ES Magazine

Offers advice and feminist learnings on how to survive when it feels like everyone around you is becoming a parent.

—— Cosmopolitan

Wise, perceptive and refreshingly open...a memoir that feels inherently personal to womanhood and what being a woman means.

—— Culturefly

A must read. Timely, honest, brave and funny calling for a new kind of conversation about love, work and parenthood.

—— Daily Mail

Bracingly honest...big-hearted... [and] page-turningly compelling

—— Holly Williams , Observer

Some Body To Love is an honest and thoughtful memoir that touches on difficult contemporary topics . . . Incredibly moving and very, very powerfu

—— Monocle

A powerful treatise on pain and love, this is an honest, moving and authentic examination of the end of a relationship, and the way our lives can fracture and recover from sudden, seismic shifts. Heminsley's writing is sharply resonant - you don't have to share her experiences to be struck by her observations about letting go with love, and how we can find strength in self-love too

—— SheerLuxe, *Books of the Year*

Energetic, dark and hilarious. Paris Lees, with her loud and proud sense of self, is set to explode.. if you read one book this summer, make it What It Feels Like for a Girl... radically cool, explosive and riotous ... long may Lees' voice shine neon bright

—— Shivani Kochnar , The Daily Mail

Like Alan Sillitoe on acid... it's got to be a film. I've never read anything like it.

—— Vicky McClure

Raw and original

—— Elle Magazine

Extraordinary, riotous, furiously unique, moving and funny, What It Feels Like for a Girl is a deeply important book as well as being a fantastic read

—— Elizabeth Day

Clever, gripping, messy, sad. I loved it.

—— Travis Alabanza

Sadness and joy also go hand-in-hand in What It Feels Like for a Girl, an exuberant account of Paris Lees's tearaway teenage years in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where "the streets are paved wi' dog shit". Her gender nonconformity is just one aspect of an adolescence that also features bullying, violence, prostitution, robbery and a spell in a young offenders' institute. Yet despite the many traumas, Lees finds joy and kinship in the underground club scene and a group of drag queens who cocoon her in love and laughter.

—— Fiona Sturges , The Guardian, Best Books of 2021

Bold and compulsively readable... She writes with humour about heartbreakingly harrowing moments while simultaneously capturing the dazzling joy of Nottingham nightlife and the importance of finding those who accept you for who you truly are

—— Emma Hanson , Harper's Bazaar, memoirs and autobiographies to be inspired by
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