'The Irish Goodbye' and 'Frog' are micro-memoirs and essays about everyday life

Summary

NPR's Book of the Day – March 6, 2026

Episode: 'The Irish Goodbye' and 'Frog' are micro-memoirs and essays about everyday life
Host: Andrew Limbong
Guests: Bethann Fennelly, Ann Fadiman, Scott Simon (interviewer)

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Episode Overview

This episode of NPR’s Book of the Day explores two new releases that celebrate short-form writing reflecting on the beauty and complexity of everyday moments. Host Andrew Limbong introduces Bethann Fennelly’s micro-memoir collection The Irish Goodbye—stories that balance humor, tenderness, and the reality of loss—and Ann Fadiman’s essay collection Frog and Other Essays, which revels in the ordinary and the nuanced messiness of life. Both authors discuss their respective works with NPR’s Scott Simon.

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Segment 1: Bethann Fennelly – The Irish Goodbye

Overview

Bethann Fennelly’s book consists of “micro-memoirs”—compact, poignant, often whimsical vignettes that capture her sister’s sudden loss, the peculiarities of marriage, and the richness of memory. The form itself allows her to balance darkness with humor and brevity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Micro-Memoir Form & Emotional Balance

  • Fennelly describes how writing in small, contained segments enabled her to touch on grief and darkness without becoming overwhelmed:
    • “Writing small allows you to go to the dark place because, you know, you get to come back out in a paragraph.” (Bethann Fennelly, 03:47)

• Marriage & Enduring Love

  • Explores the often-overlooked humor and the unique rhythms of long-term relationships:
    • “We celebrate in songs and movies, unrequited love or first love. But married love is its own beast with its own humors and moments of recognition and vulnerability.” (Bethann Fennelly, 04:58)

• Processing Grief & Family Loss

  • Fennelly discusses her reluctance and eventual necessity to write explicitly about her sister’s death:
    • “I didn't want to talk about it because it's too painful. But I'd written all these pieces about mourning her… And I went the fastest and most painful route I could think of just to tear off the band aid, which was quoting from my sister's autopsy report.” (Bethann Fennelly, 05:56)
    • On confronting this pain:
      “I'm not interested in protecting myself or being coy or photoshopping my emotions or my life. I simply didn't talk about that because I didn't think I could. And finally getting it out, I think might help free some of the burden I carry.” (Bethann Fennelly, 06:47)

• Vulnerability & Experimentation

  • Fennelly recounts posing for an art project, reflecting her broader thematic interest in vulnerability and openness:
    • “This artist… said he wanted imperfect bodies, and I happen to have an imperfect body… So I did pose as an experiment to see if I could accept being that revealing. And I'm glad I did it.” (Bethann Fennelly, 07:59)

• Memory and Truth-Telling in Memoir

  • She explores how memory is both a tool and a liability in memoir:
    • “I think we pack them up into satchels, but every time we unpack our satchels, we revise them. And writing a memoir… we realize our memories are faulty and that when we're recollecting things, we have our own biases.” (Bethann Fennelly, 08:46)
    • Fennelly notes she asked people mentioned to read and sign off on their portrayals (09:15).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On writing through pain:

  • “Finally getting it out, I think might help free some of the burden I carry.” (Bethann Fennelly, 06:47)

• On long marriages:

  • “Married love is its own beast with its own humors and moments of recognition and vulnerability.” (Bethann Fennelly, 04:58)

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Timestamps

• Micro-memoir form and grief vs. humor: 03:12–03:55
• The “Married Love” essay reading: 04:02–04:52
• On discussing her sister’s death: 05:25–06:47
• Nude modeling and vulnerability: 07:29–08:36
• Truth and the slipperiness of memory: 08:46–09:15

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Segment 2: Ann Fadiman – Frog and Other Essays

Overview

Ann Fadiman’s new collection accelerates the shift from formal, argument-driven essays to ruminative, surprising explorations of the mundane—love for an ancient printer, eating colored candies, the ritual of listing, and finding meaning in the smallest family moments.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Essays Beyond Clear Arguments

  • Fadiman’s collection finds richness in ambiguity and digression:
    • “The essayist… lives in a grayer, more nuanced, I hope sometimes more subtle and mainly more surprising area. The essayists I like best surprise me, and that's what I try to do in mine…” (Ann Fadiman, 18:14)

• Title Essay “Frog” and the Question of What (And Who) Matters

  • A family’s relationship with an unlikely pet and the rituals of mourning:
    • “Until last summer, we had a dead frog in our freezer… Bunky was flat and compact and very soon as rigid as a cell phone. He fit perfectly. I'd always wondered what KitchenAid intended that shelf for… Now we knew it was intended to hold a frog.” (Ann Fadiman, reading, 11:40–12:20)
    • “Thinking about Bunky's role in our family made me ask myself questions like, well, what is a pet? Must there be reciprocal affection? What do we owe a pet? We owed him more than we gave him. And that's what this very ashamed, guilty essay… is about.” (Ann Fadiman, 13:00–13:41)

• The Power and Poetry of Lists

  • Fadiman reflects lovingly on the form and order of lists:
    • “I think a good list is almost like a poem… I'm certainly not a poet, but lists are maybe the closest clumsy thing I can do to approach a poem.” (Ann Fadiman, 13:45–14:15)
  • Poetic reading of expedition supplies for Scott’s Antarctic journey (14:24–15:30).

• Literature as Survival

  • On the cleverness and communal role of The South Polar Times:
    • “The idea was, how do you keep the men from getting depressed and going nuts? And part of it was, let's have a magazine… One of the most touching periodicals I've ever heard of, because all these men were facing grave danger and… they just acted like teenage boys, making fun jokes and sharing in crowd humor.” (Ann Fadiman, 16:00–17:04)

• Reading, Attention, and Nuance Amid Distraction

  • Fadiman laments the trend toward short, strident opinions versus complex prose:
    • “So much of technology is supposed to save us time… If we can't even read an essay, I think that we're really in a pickle.” (Ann Fadiman, 17:33)
    • “I'm trying to break through that kind of black and white. Yes or no? Let's say it in less than a page. Let's make the opinion always clear. Let's never change our opinions. …It's not okay for the essayist who lives in a grayer, more nuanced… and mainly more surprising area.” (Ann Fadiman, 18:14)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the ghostly, dead-frog-in-the-freezer pet:

  • “Bunky was flat and compact and very soon as rigid as a cell phone… Now we knew [the shelf] was intended to hold a frog.” (Ann Fadiman, 11:40–12:20)

• On poetry and lists:

  • “I think a good list is almost like a poem.” (Ann Fadiman, 13:45)

• On the power of surprising essays:

  • “The essayists I like best surprise me, and that's what I try to do in mine…” (Ann Fadiman, 18:14)

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Timestamps

• Opening “Frog” essay excerpt: 11:40–12:20
• What is a pet? and family guilt: 13:00–13:41
• The power and poetry of lists: 13:45–14:15
• Scott Antarctic expedition and The South Polar Times: 14:24–17:04
• Modern reading habits and nuance: 17:22–18:47

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Episode Tone and Takeaways

Both Fennelly and Fadiman bring humor and vulnerability to the banalities and catastrophes of life. The episode’s tone is congenial, spirited, and gently philosophical—celebrating the artistry found in short forms and reminding listeners of the value, comfort, and surprise in everyday experiences.

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For Listeners Looking for…

• Quick, substantial reads: Memoirs and essays approachable in small bursts
• The beauty of the ordinary: Both books linger on life’s overlooked or everyday elements
• Emotion and Humor: Each author deftly mixes gravity and levity
• The craft of short nonfiction: Both Fennelly and Fadiman challenge conventions of their forms, inviting deeper connection and reflection

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Both The Irish Goodbye and Frog and Other Essays are available now.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Outside of my working hours, I've stopped trying to set aside 30 or 45 minute blocks to read. It's pretty impossible to do if you have a toddler at home. Instead, I've been trying to find pockets, 10 minutes here, five minutes there while the kid is cooking something up in the play kitchen. Which means I've been partial to short form stuff, collections of essays or memoir or poetry. So today we've got two books for you that fit that bill. Up ahead, an essay collection about, well, to be honest, some of the most mundane stuff you could think of, but it manages to come off as beautiful. But first, the poet Bethann Fennelly has a collection of micro memoirs called the Irish Goodbye. A lot of it is about the sudden death of Fennelly's sister, but it's not just sad, it's also funny and absurd. She talks to NPR's Scott Simon about how the form of the micro essay helped keep the book to write tonally balanced. That's after the break.

[B]

This message comes from Liveright publishers of Churn the Tension that Divides Us and How to Overcome It. Author Claude Steele examines the stress people can experience in life's culturally diverse settings and how to build trust. Churn, available now.

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[D]

An Irish Goodbye is when somebody leaves without bidding farewell. New collection of micro memoirs by the poet Bethann Fennelly considers love, parenthood, old pals, a cherished mother in law. But her sister Julie, who died in 2008, is a presence throughout, including in this reflection called two sisters, one slicing the cake, one choosing first.

[E]

Keeping meticulous score was our favorite girlhood pastime, adjudicating the dispersal of the cereal box's plastic treasure, tallying who had more Christmas presents under the tree when given a piece of cake to split. One sister was handed the knife, the other got to pick her half, quadruple, fanatical eyeballs pressing down on the blade, its slow, slow submergence through the buttercream. And then, poof, you rolled over and played dead, took yourself right, right out of the game. Fancy that.

[D]

Bethann Fennelly was poet laureate of Mississippi, and she teaches at the University of Mississippi and joins us now from Oxford. Her book, the Irish Goodbye. Thank you so much for being with Us.

[E]

Oh, thank you, Scott.

[D]

What was it like to write there's laughter in here, but also a lot of sadness and anger.

[E]

Well, I did hope the book could try to capture the full range of the human emotion, all the. The colors of the human heart. The death of my sister in 2008 is a pretty dark strand that runs through the book, but I also find that there's a lot of whimsy and humor and absurdity in life. And the form I was writing in micro memoirs, little tiny true stories about my life, allowed me to find some of the difficult moments to balance out some of the darker material.

[D]

Is that a way of keeping going when you're doing a book like this?

[E]

Absolutely. And I also think writing small allows you to go to the dark place because, you know, you get to come back out in a paragraph.

[D]

Can I ask you to read something else?

[E]

Absolutely.

[D]

Married love, Playing the long game.

[E]

Oh, sure.

[D]

And I'll. I'll tell our listeners this is a poem about a kitchen implement, let's put it that way.

[E]

Even now, three years later, when she opens the drawer beside the stove for an oven mitt, she finds the oven mitts folded. This is because three years earlier, during an intense game of Scattergories, when the category was things you fold and the letter was O, her husband had written oven mitts. Nobody folds oven mitts. She scoffed and refused him his point, forcing him ever since to prove it.

[D]

Oh, that's wonderful.

[E]

Thank you.

[D]

And it says a lot about marriage over the long term, doesn't it?

[E]

Yeah. So one thing I was interested in looking at is the love of people who've been hanging out for a long time, because I don't think our culture has an ethos that appreciates that kind of love. We celebrate in songs and movies, unrequited love or first love. But married love is its own. Its own beast with its own humors and moments of recognition and vulnerability. So I was looking at that as well.

[D]

Can I get you to talk about your sister?

[E]

Yes. My sister died very suddenly. It was a difficult and complicated death because no one saw it coming, including her. She thought she had the flu, but in fact, she died of pneumonia.

[D]

I was interested in the exchange that you share with us with an editor who wanted you to talk about how she died. And that piece is entitled because my editor suggests I reveal how my Sister died.

[E]

Yeah, I have a really great editor, and she's Jill Bialaski at Norton. And I turned the book into her, and she accepted it. And she said, you know, you have to tell the reader how your sister died. And I did not like that at all, because I knew she was right. And I didn't want to talk about it because it's too painful. But I'd written all these pieces about mourning her, and in a way, it directed the reader to think about her death. But I never talked about her death. I never gave the reason why. And I went the fastest and most painful route I could think of just to tear off the band aid, which was quoting from my sister's autopsy report. And I wrote the piece really fast, and then the book was actually done.

[D]

How did that feel?

[E]

Horrible.

[D]

But necessary.

[E]

Yeah, necessary. And in a way, I mean, I guess I'm. I'm 54, Scott. I'm not interested in holding anything back anymore. I'm not interested in protecting myself or being coy or photoshopping my emotions or my life. I simply didn't talk about that because I didn't think I could. And finally getting it out, I think might help free some of the burden I carry.

[D]

Yeah. You devote the last piece in your collection to a brief episode where you worked as a nude model.

[E]

Well, that's almost putting it too strongly. I didn't work as a nude model. That's, you know, a little salacious sounding. I did pose. I was one of 12 people in my little town of Oxford, Mississippi, who posed for an.

[D]

I didn't mean to be salacious. I was saluting your professionalism.

[B]

Thank you.

[E]

Well, I didn't really get paid, but yes. Yes, I did do this thing that shocked me and still shocks me, actually.

[D]

Well, I mean, you didn't have to. What led you to decide it would be something you wanted to do?

[E]

Well, almost exactly what we were just talking about, Scott, in the regard that I'm interested in vulnerability. I'm not interested in shrouding anymore anything. And this artist who I respect, said he wanted imperfect bodies, and I happen to have an imperfect body. And his name is Robert Townsend, and his work is so beautiful, and I trusted him. So I did pose as an experiment to see if I could accept being that revealing. And I'm glad I did it. But I did really have to do a lot of thinking about it, and that's why I wrote the essay.

[D]

At this point in your life, what do you think about memories? Do we revise them as we go along? Do we pack them up into satchels we can carry along?

[E]

I think we. Think we pack them up into satchels, but every time we unpack our satchels, we revise them. And writing a memoir, of course, is an interesting exercise in what truth is because we realize our memories are faulty and that when we're recollecting things, we have our own biases. So I did try to fact check my own memories with anyone I could, and if I mentioned anyone by name in these pieces, I asked them to read them and sign off on them.

[D]

Bethann Fennelly her collection is the Irish Goodbye. Thank you so much for being with us.

[E]

Oh, thanks, Scott. I really enjoyed it.

[B]

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[A]

When I was a kid, I was taught that essays are supposed to be clear arguments. In this essay, I will show xyz, but those are kind of boring, aren't they? Ann Fadiman's new essay collection called Frog and Other Essays doesn't live in the black and white space of making clear arguments, but instead in the weirdness and beauty that is our Everyday Lives. Here's NPR's Scott Simon again.

[D]

Ann Fadiman's new book of essays take on topics that might not seem the most urgent of our times, but we soon learn otherwise. She writes about a pet she couldn't pet a Hewlett Packard LaserJet Series 2 printer that she couldn't bring herself to replace eating M and Ms. According to color and how that relates to relaxing her scrupulous rules for grammar. She is one of the foremost essayists in America, and her new collection is called, with characteristic Precision, Frog and Other Essays. Ann Fadiman, who is also a professor and writer in residence at Yale, joins us from New Haven. Thanks so much for being with us

[F]

it's wonderful to be with you, Scott.

[D]

Ann, I can't think of a better way to begin than by asking you to read the first paragraph from the title essay.

[F]

I'd be delighted. Until last summer, we had a dead frog in our freezer. When Bunky died, George and I thought we should wait to bury him till both our grown children were home. So we put him in a Ziploc bag and propped him on his side on a shallow shelf in the freezer door just above the ice maker. Bunky was flat and compact and very soon as rigid as a cell phone. He fit perfectly. I'd always wondered what KitchenAid intended that shelf for. It was too narrow for any food I could think of. But now we knew it was intended to hold a frog.

[D]

Well, bless Bunkie. How did he enter your family life?

[F]

By accident, like most unpetable pets of his sort. Via a tadpole coupon left under a Christmas tree by a grandmother, eventually redeemed and tadpole arrived in the mailbox. And at that point, we thought that this tadpole would be as evanescent as most frogs seem to be. But he lasted for at least 16 years.

[D]

Does the fact that Bunkie was utterly silent?

[F]

Oh, he wasn't silent at night. He ribbeted.

[D]

Well, I meant in response to you,

[F]

but all right, in response to us, because, yes, his ribbits, very poignantly, were theoretically to attract female African clawed frogs. And of course, you know, the nearest African clawed frog was God knows how many hundreds of miles away and wasn't going to respond. But thinking about Bunky's role in our family made me ask myself questions like, well, what is a pet? Must there be reciprocal affection? What do we owe a pet? We owed him more than we gave him. And that's what this very ashamed, guilty essay on a seemingly trivial subject is about.

[D]

You seem to really love a good list. What's the attraction there?

[F]

I think a good list is almost like a poem. I love the notion of gathering a bunch of disparate things together and thinking very carefully about which things should be next to other things. What sequence do we want? What's going to sound good in my own essays? I'm certainly not a poet, but lists are maybe the closest clumsy thing I can do to approach a poem.

[D]

Let's give that a try. Could I ask you to read the supplies carried by Robert Falcon Scott's first Antarctic expedition on the discovery?

[F]

Absolutely. So this takes place in 1902. Its cargo included guns, axes, saws, sledges, skis, compasses, chronometers barometers, thermometers, microscopes, telescopes, telescopes, magnetographs, theodolites, fireworks for signaling, explosives for blasting through ice, a windmill to generate electricity, a balloon for aerial surveys, a set of magic tricks, a collection of theatrical costumes, a piano, a harmonium, 36 cases of sherry, 5000 pounds of marmalade, and more than 1500 books, 48 of them by Sir Walter Scott. The discovery also carried a single typewriter, a Remington Number seven, on which Ernest Shackleton, the third lieutenant in charge of holds, stores, provisions and deep sea water analysis, would perform an additional and perhaps even more vital duty as the founding editor of Antarctica's only magazine, the South Polar Times.

[D]

All right, you've convinced me. That's kind of poetic.

[F]

Thank you. I'm glad that you see it that way.

[D]

What struck you about the South Polar Times, which I confess, I let my subscription lapse.

[F]

Well, most people have. It was a pretty hard magazine to subscribe to. Each issue came out in a very limited edition, as in one copy. So There were these two expeditions to Antarctica led by Robert Falcon Scott in 1902 and 1911, because for many months of the year it was pitch dark and they couldn't try to get to the South Pole and they couldn't do any scientific work. The idea was, how do you keep the men from getting depressed and going nuts? And part of it was, let's have a magazine. And so every month or so a new issue would come out with hand drawn illustrations, contributions, many of them comical by the men on the expedition, or it was passed around and chuckled over and read hundreds of times. One of the most touching periodicals I've ever heard of, because all these men were facing grave danger and the strong possibility of death as soon as the sun started to come out. And indeed, five of them did end up dying on the way back from the South Pole. But boy, they just acted like teenage boys, making fun jokes and sharing in crowd humor.

[D]

That kind of reminds you of the power of the printed word, doesn't it?

[F]

Yes. And of course, in this case it was the typed word. Each expedition had one typewriter, and that typewriter belonged to the editor of the South Polar Times.

[D]

In these days of short bursts for attention, do people have time anymore for real essays that can have a complexity of thought?

[F]

I think we have to make time, and I'm always scratching my head because so much of technology is supposed to save us time. We should have a lot of time left in our lives to not only read an essay that's pretty short, we should be able to read War and Peace. So if we can't even read an essay, I think that we're really in a pickle.

[D]

But I wonder, have people grown to endorse, click by click, strident opinions but not complex, nuanced ones of the kind you can find in your essays?

[F]

Yes. Why do you think I wrote these essays?

[D]

Okay, that was easier than I thought.

[F]

I'm trying to break through that kind of black and white. Yes or no? Let's say it in less than a page. Let's make the opinion always clear. Let's never change our opinions. You know, that sort of thing is okay for the newspaper, but it's not okay for the essayist who lives in a grayer, more nuanced, I hope sometimes more subtle and mainly more surprising area. The essayists I like best surprise me, and that's what I try to do in mine, I'm sure not always with success, but that's what I'm attempting.

[D]

Ann Fadiman, her new book, Frog and Other Essays. Thank you so much for being with us.

[F]

It was a total pleasure.

[A]

That's it for this week on NPR's Book of the Day. Let us know what you think you can write to us at Book of the day, pr.org I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The podcast is produced by Chloe Weiner and Ivy Buck and edited by Megan Sullivan. Our founding editor is Petra Mayer. The show elements for this week were produced and edited by Justine Kennan, Sarah Robbins, Elena Burnett, Ava Pukach, Adriana Gallardo, Anna Perez, Danny Hensel, de Provoz, Alina Torek, Jacob Fenston, Dave Misditch, Shannon Rhodes, Martin Patience, and Samantha Balaban. Yolanda Sanguini is our executive producer. Thanks for listening.

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