Contradiction Days is that startling and rebellious work we see too rarely—a portrait of the female artist, pregnant with a baby and ambition, with rage and desire, who remains preoccupied by questions of philosophy, aesthetics, and abstraction, as her body grows. Novak's writing in these pages is as sublime, precise and arresting as the Agnes Martin paintings that transfix her.
—Danzy Senna, author of New People
“Anyone who’s ever thought about—or lived at the intersection of—art, obsession, and embodiment will take solace in and inspiration from Contradiction Days. With Agnes Martin as both her source and temple, Novak charts the fear, euphoria, and madness of both art- and life-making. Contradiction Days is an exquisite ode to the inseparable pain and bliss of creation.”
A book about art-making and life-making; just as honest about the contradictions as it is about wonder. JoAnna Novak dexterously writes her world.
–Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
What more could one want from a memoir? JoAnna Novak shies away from nothing in the portrayal of her struggle towards elusive self certainty and maternal commitment. I have not read a more honest account of the intellectual, physical, and psychological insecurities that both threaten and sustain us. A brave and thought-provoking book about the will to live and the will to create.
—Kathleen Finneran, author of The Tender Land: A Family Love Story
JoAnna Novak uses obsession as her guide to write sharply and beautifully about different aspects of survival—if she gives herself the right rules in the right place, can she finally get it right? Contradiction Days is fierce in its ambition and vivid in its execution.
—Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else
Contradiction Days is a memoir that unfolds like a thriller, a taut, explosive self-examination from an artist trying to simultaneously forget and remember her body. There is sun-bright truth heating every page. As a writer, as a mother, I inhaled this quest for a knowledge that doesn't consume, but reveals.