I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of A Girl: A Memoir

"If any memoir has a pulse running through it, if any work of art contains within it the potential of transcendence, it is in your hands. I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl begins in a kind of glorious, terrible, ridiculous chaos, but then as we get closer and closer to its heartbreaking center and to the narrator herself, the "heavy things" start falling off - of her, of us - a heaviness we didn't know we'd even been carrying. Kelle Groom has somehow found a container for each bright, hard spark of this life."

— Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and The Ticking is the Bomb

"In language as precise and sparkling as the tip of a razor against your skin..."

— Will Allison, author of Long Drive Home

"Groom’s stunning memoir reads more like poetry than prose and leaves the ‘brain singing with neurons like a city at night.’ . . . . Her astonishing struggle and unique resurrection illuminate the universal human effort to embrace one’s self, accepting personal flaws, demons, and methods of survival.”

— Booklist

"In a series of beautifully compressed narratives, Groom, who grapples here with the very meaning of motherhood, describes devastating binges... As heartbreaking as this book is, Groom writes with a captivating urgency. Her salvation, a result of her tireless quest for clarity, will leave you cheering."

 — Susanna Sonnenberg, More