Twenty-Two Impressions (Jessica Friedmann, Scribe)

For years, Jessica Friedmann (Things That Helped) circled the tarot, feeling a combination of mild embarrassment, curiosity and intellectual bewilderment when a pack was inevitably drawn at the end of a party. But then, while listless on a trip in 2018, something shifted, and she bought herself a set of the Tarot de Marseille. It opened worlds to her. Twenty-Two Impressions is an illustrated paean to the cards, written in the searching, intellectual style of Fiona Wright or Siri Hustvedt. As a newcomer to the tarot, I found the book’s first half challenging. A historical overview of the tarot’s storied 600-year history is fascinating yet overwhelming, densely researched, and lacking Friedmann’s guiding voice. However, the book’s second half is a wonder: luminous and tender, full of nuance and possibility, it is a series of personal reflections on each of the 22 cards in the major arcana. These form a framework for making sense of Friedmann’s own bushfire-plagued, flood- and drought-stricken pandemic years—and our own. Here, she merges memoir with instruction, historical insights with everyday observation, consideration of the cards’ universal major themes with the specificity of her own circumstances, as well as wider reading into art, culture, spirituality, wellness and shifting social attitudes around the cards. It’s a lucid reminder of the ‘ongoingness’ of history, stories and the self—a meditation on the everyday magic of life and an argument for the enduring legacy of the tarot.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Mel Fulton is a writer, editor, and host of Literati Glitterati on Triple R. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

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