The Dry Season by Melissa Febos, Hardcover, 9781837260096 | Buy online at The Nile
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The Dry Season

Finding Pleasure in a Year Without Sex

Author: Melissa Febos  

Hardcover

From the bestselling author of Girlhood, an examination of celibacy as well as the solitude, the freedoms and the feminist heroes discovered along the way - a wise and transformative look at relationships and self-knowledge

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8th September 2025
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Hardcover

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Summary

From the bestselling author of Girlhood, an examination of celibacy as well as the solitude, the freedoms and the feminist heroes discovered along the way - a wise and transformative look at relationships and self-knowledge

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Description

'Brilliant and powerful' ELIZABETH GILBERT
'So full of wisdom and pleasure that you don't want it to end' MAGGIE NELSON

In the wake of a disastrous two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break - for three months she would abstain from dating, relationships and sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Melissa, it was. Ever since her teens, she had been in one relationship or another. It was time to focus on herself and examine the lifelong patterns that had got her to this point. When those three months ended, she decided to extend her celibate period, fearing that she had not yet gained the clarity she was searching for. She knew she was taking on a challenge but had no idea that this year would become the most fulfilling and sensual of her life.

No longer defined by her romantic pursuits, Melissa learned to relish the delights of solitude, the thrill of living on her own terms, the pleasures unmediated by lovers and the freedom to pursue her ideals without distraction or guilt. She began to see her life and her self-worth in a radical new way. Her year of divestment transformed her relationships with friends and peers, her work, creativity - and most of all her relationship to herself.

The Dry Season is a memoir of Melissa's year of celibacy, and a profound exploration of independence, sexuality and deep self-knowledge.

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Critic Reviews

'Reading The Dry Season is like having a nourishing conversation with a smart, wry and ever-probing friend - a conversation so full of wisdom and pleasure that you don't want it to end. The example of Febos's commitment throughout these pages is inspiring and rare; we're lucky and better off for it' - MAGGIE NELSON, author of The Argonauts

'The Dry Season is a brilliant and powerful meditation upon addiction, desire, seduction and the undervalued (and all-too-unexplored) power of a woman laying claim to a period of celibacy [ . . . ]. Febos is both unflinching and compassionate. A deeply important book, I saw myself and many women whom I love and admire on every page' - ELIZABETH GILBERT, author of Eat, Pray, Love

'Who knew that a memoir of celibacy could be so stirring? A thoughtful, exacting study of the loss of self - both transcendent and self-abnegatory - that comes with desire. Melissa Febos teaches us that strength comes from vulnerability, and how a keen mind feels but also dissects' - CAL FLYNN, author of Islands of Abandonment

'Panoramic yet whisper-close, so funny, exquisitely alive - radiant with ideas new and ancient like stars in a clear night sky' - JEREMY ATHERTON LIN, author of Deep House

'Melissa Febos is a writer of singular wisdom and compassion, and The Dry Season is an utterly consuming and deeply generous book' - LESLIE JAMISON, author of Splinters

'Melissa Febos's The Dry Season will be called a book about abstinence, about celibacy, but it's so much more than that [ . . . ]. It's the best book yet by one of contemporary non-fiction's lodestars' - KAVEH AKBAR, author of Martyr!

'Deftly illuminates how and why one's sense of self is subject to change, mutilate or surrender when in relation to another and asks what happens when that stops. The result is profound - Febos embraces the ability to be alone and in love with oneself. The Dry Season is essential reading' -A.M. HOMES, author of The Unfolding

'Only Melissa Febos could write a memoir of her sexual abstinence and make it like a game of Cluedo. A profound, distilled, untying of a complex knot - Febos riddles out the ways we might subjugate ourselves even with the ways we imagine we are liberated' - ALEXANDER CHEE, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

'As a queer memoirist, Febos provides a sorely needed perspective on the cultural trope of the "incel," presenting instead a model for celibacy that is self-guided rather than socially imposed and compassionate rather than punitive; this book should be required reading for anyone who's ever been told to "just take a break from relationships.' - VOGUE

'Mixing personal narrative with cultural criticism, the author of Girlhood explores how celibacy radicalized her, giving her permission to put all of her focus on herself, her work, and the platonic relationships that deserved more of her attention.' - TIME

'[The Dry Season] reveals Febos at her sharpest as she chronicles the year she spent celibate . . . As much as it's a book about celibacy, it is also a book about recovery and attention. Who does a person become when they cede their life to infatuation? And how does one return to the things they most love after losing a lover?' - Vulture

'[A] delicious memoir of sensuality and desire . . Juicy and thoughtful and lovely' - Lit Hub

'Melissa Febos is straight-up one of the most essential memoirists today, each of her books a deeply profound exploration of the mind and the body and the complex relationship between them. . . It's a testament to Febos's incredible skill that a book centered on celibacy features some of the most erotic writing she's ever put to paper . . . Of course, Dry Season is not just about celibacy; it's a treatise on listening to and trusting our corporeal instincts, on finding authentic forms of pleasure independent from hegemonic scripts. It's a book that is itself a pleasure.' - Electric Lit

'An astonishingly rich and affirming analysis, through the subject of celibacy, of what it means to love and be loved - what real intimacy requires, what it urges and what it generates. The Dry Season is the best kind of writing: curious, erudite, funny and deeply humane. I'm so grateful to be living in a world that has Melissa Febos's writing in it' - SOPHIE GILBERT, author of Girl on Girl

'Melissa Febos draws us into the depths of obsession and desire, delivering an unflinching yet generous reflection on the formative moments that shape our relationships. This is no ordinary excavation; it's a director's cut of our darkest impulses, a mirror held up to our psyche. This is a dictionary of vulnerability, a guide to understanding the why behind our desires, not just the what. The Dry Season is a testament to the power of self-awareness, a way forward for those brave enough to look back' - SAMRA HABIB, author of We Have Always Been Here

'What would it take to truly appreciate your own company? To have a bigger, more expansive life filled with passion for friends, family, and work? To live authentically? Much to my delight, Melissa Febos was gifted with all of that in her year without romance or sex. Her supposedly "dry season" was fertile and vital' -BELLA DEPAULO, author of Single At Heart

'Although a book about abstention, at its essence this story is about understanding, reclaiming, and celebrating pleasure, rendered sublimely and with wit. A gorgeous and thought-provoking memoir about how celibacy can teach us about love.' -Kirkus Reviews

'A consummate builder of words and conveyer of ideas, Febos's keen writing about sex, gender, and addiction is in a class of its own.' - Booklist

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About the Author

Melissa Febos is the national bestselling author of four previous books: Whip Smart, Abandon Me, Girlhood - winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism - and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. She has been awarded prizes and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, LAMBDA Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, the British Library, the Black Mountain Institute, the Bogliasco Foundation, MacDowell, the American Library in Paris and others. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Best American Essays, Vogue, Sewanee Review, New York Review of Books and elsewhere. Febos is a full professor at the University of Iowa and lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly.

@melissafebos | melissafebos.com

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Product Details

Publisher
Canongate Books
Published
5th June 2025
Pages
288
ISBN
9781837260096

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