My grateful thanks to Elizabeth Allen at Orion for sending me a surprise copy of Breasts: A Relatively Brief Relationship by Jean Hannah Edelstein. It’s my pleasure to share my review of Breasts today.
Breasts: A Relatively Brief Relationship was published by Orion imprint Phoenix on 3rd April 2025 and is available for purchase here.
Breasts A Relatively Brief Relationship
In this short, striking memoir, Jean Hannah Edelstein charts the course of her unexpectedly brief relationship with breasts.
As she comes of age, she learns that breasts are a source of both shame and power. In early motherhood, she sees her breasts transform into a source of sustenance and a locus of pain. And then, all too soon, she is faced with a diagnosis and forced to confront what it means to lose and rebuild an essential part of yourself.
Funny and moving, elegant and furious and full of heart, Breasts is an original and indispensable read. It is both an intimate account of one woman’s relationship with her own body and a universally relatable story for anyone who has ever had – or lost – breasts.
My Review of Breasts: A Relatively Brief Relationship
The story of one woman’s relationship with her breasts.
Let’s me be clear, I am not a mother, nor have I ever wanted to be and I’m not a great lover of memoir so a book that is a memoir with a third of its text related to breastfeeding was a book I was not expecting to engage with. It isn’t possible to stress how wrong I was. Breasts is a magnificent volume that ought to be compulsory reading for everyone. I thought it was astonishingly good.
I loved the structure and tone of Jean Hannah Edelstein’s writing. The three sections felt part of the dramatic tradition of a three act play and the build up to the author’s diagnosis of cancer follows that traditional narrative arc perfectly. But this isn’t fiction. It’s one woman’s experience of life in relation to her breasts told with honesty, humour, self-deprecating awareness and in a style that is accessible and gripping. I read this slim volume in one sitting because it held my attention so completely. The prose is sparse and yet all encompassing. The simple repetition of a phrase or a rhetorical question conveys profound meaning. This is a masterclass of understated writing and deeply affecting to read.
With the author’s first person voice ringing through the text it feels as if the reader is listening to a very dear friend relating aspects of their life. Jean Hannah Edelstein comes across as a kind of Everywoman. She represents compliance and subversion, rage and acceptance, fear and bravery. I thought not only was Breasts fantastic, but the author probably is too.
Reading Breasts ensures the reader contemplates just what is important in life, illustrating how a slight change of interpretation can completely invert how we might feel. It made me rage for the sexism and misogyny some women have encountered. It educated me about motherhood. It made me laugh and it made me shed a tear. Above all, it captivated me completely. Breasts is a book that, through one woman’s perspective, shines a light on the whole of society and our expectations in the western world.
It feels a privilege to have read Breasts and I’d urge anyone to read it. It’s fantastic.
About Jean Hannah Edelstein
Jean Hannah Edelstein is a British-American writer. Her memoir This Really Isn’t About You was published by Picador in 2018. Her journalism has been published in numerous UK and US outlets, including the Guardian, Elle and New York Magazine.
For further information, visit Jean’s website or find Jean on Instagram and Bluesky.
English (US) · 