“The Tantrum, animated by good humor and ungovernability, is so daring. There is simply no one doing personal writing on Garnett’s level right now.” —Jia Tolentino

“An elegant, funny, totally original story of self-transformation. Few writers are more astute about the way we go looking for ourselves in other people’s bodies and minds.” —Rachel Aviv

An achingly beautiful and funny portrait of intimacy and upheaval that uses personal stories of marriage, separation, twin sisterhood, parenting, sex, and money to explore the tension of being both subsumed into others and alone.

After an experiment in nonmonogamy upends her life, Jean Garnett gropes her way toward a new kind of existence is this intense, funny account of a woman's breakdown. An unflinching study of need, envy, devotion, 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.