The Last Year

"The moments that change us, the ghosts that follow us, the memories that slow us down or keep us afloat - Jill Talbot has found the language for all of that. Talbot, a longtime single mother, hopes she was enough as she prepares to launch her daughter into the world. Anyone who has ever loved a child will recognize themselves in her mirror. I didn't want this book to end." - Connie Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Daughters of Erietown



"In The Last Year, Jill Talbot turns the small things sacred, distilling the quiet moments between a mother and daughter into something veering toward revelation.  Each page reminds us that the greatest dramas of our lives often go unnoticed-unless we do the noticing. Part epiphany, part elegy, all love.  This book is a small mercy.  Its gift is grace."

- B.J. Hollars, author of Go West, Young Man: A Father and Son Rediscover America on the Oregon Trail



"In The Last Year, Jill Talbot achieves that rare magic that can exist in the finest examples of the essay form: she captures the ecstatic, mysterious fullness of life in each moment. These missives are about so many things - parenthood, grief, fear, pain, joy, art. Every sentence carries the weight of the past, the breathless potential of the future. Every detail is loaded with honesty, introspection, and, above all else, care. To read it, to bear witness to this mother/daughter relationship as Talbot stands on the precipice of enormous change, is a gift."

 - Lucas Mann, author of Captive Audience: On Love and Reality TV



"Jill Talbot's The Last Year is an evocative and heart wrenching portrait of her final days living with her daughter, Indie, who's about to leave home for university - just as the world begins to shut down in the face of the Covid19 pandemic. Across a series of deftly crafted essays Talbot's prose draws lasting images of a precarious life of her and her daughter on the road as they relocate from one short term academic posting to another. Talbot proves to be a great American chronicler, like the passing moments of life caught by the Leica of beat photographer Robert Frank in The Americans, The Last Year elevates fleeting and ephemeral moments, a favourite booth in a bar, a view from a front doorstep, an empty flat left behind, to a profound view of what makes us who we are."

- Felicity Jones, Actress and Producer