A portrait of intimacy and midlife upheaval that uses personal stories of marriage, separation, twinhood, parenting, sex, and money to explore the tension of being both subsumed into others and alone.

After an experiment in non-monogamy upends her life, calling into question every choice she has made and everything she has believed about herself, Jean Garnett gropes her way toward a new kind of existence is this intense, funny, aching account of a woman's breakdown.

Dissecting her closest entanglements and her most frightening feelings, Garnett explores marriage, separation, sex, twin sisterhood, money, heartbreak, parenthood, and the problem of what to do with the emotions that overwhelm us. An unflinching study of need, envy, infatuation, depression and the sudden and mystifying ways our identities can change, The Tantrum is about the relationships that define, destroy and sustain us, and about trying—perhaps unsuccessfully—to find oneself as a single being.

'A uniquely thrilling writer . . . The Tantrum, animated by good humor and ungovernability, is so daring: Garnett shows herself as breakable where the world wants strength, fearless when the reader feels danger. There is simply no one doing personal writing on her level right now' JIA TOLENTINO

© Jean Garnett 2027 (P) Penguin Audio 2027