Complex, ambitious, and far-ranging. Hassinger's innovative form, inspired by her central metaphor, jazz, keeps the book vibrantly leaping, surprising us with juxtapositions and unexpected harmonies. In the same way that jazz improv allows one instrument to step into the limelight and then recede, the multiple themes of Apocalypse in Blue--a midlife marriage, the climate crisis, musicology, and philosophy--emerge and retreat. Hassinger's inquiry--"Who am I, and what am I for?"--furthered my own; I'm so grateful this memoir exists.
--Beth Ann Fennelly, author of The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs