BY CHI JADE TRAN
Back to the Quiet Studio
The summer I went to live with myself again
About the book
A literary collection of memoir and essays about returning—not to a place, but to oneself.
Purchase directly from Amazon. Current prices and available editions are listed there.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Synopsis
Back to the Quiet Studio (The Summer I Went to Live with Myself Again) is a literary collection of memoir and essays about returning—not to a place, but to oneself.
Following the quiet dissolution of a long-term relationship, the author leaves the life she had built and begins an inward journey across Europe and beyond. Through solitary travels, intimate encounters, journal entries, and reflections on neuroscience, philosophy, language, and literature, she gradually reconstructs an identity long submerged beneath routine, expectations, and loss.
Rather than following a chronological narrative, the book unfolds through interconnected essays that move between different periods of her life, including those long before her latest relationship. A sunrise run through Rome, a conversation with a cleaning lady on moving day, wandering through Milan in the Summer heat, sleeping beside the sea in Mallorca, trekking along Luxembourg’s border, and listening to rain on an attic roof in Meersburg become quiet meditations on love, solitude, memory, belonging, and the resilience of the human spirit.
At the heart of the memoir lies a simple yet universal question: What remains when everything familiar falls away? Rather than searching for another person to complete her story, the author learns to inhabit her own company again, discovering that solitude is not emptiness but a space where healing, creativity, and self-understanding can quietly flourish. Interwoven throughout the narrative are reflections on the psychology of attachment, the neuroscience of emotion, the philosophy of happiness, and the untranslatable nuances of the Vietnamese language.
Written in contemplative prose, Back to the Quiet Studio is a celebration of slow living, emotional honesty, and the courage not to begin again but to gather what remains and carry it forward.
It is a book for readers drawn to literary memoir, reflective travel writing, and essays that explore the quiet beauty of ordinary life. Ultimately, it arrives at one of those humble stations one might find in a quiet town somewhere in Europe: that the greatest journey is not across continents, but toward the place within ourselves where we finally feel at home. And perhaps, the destination we are looking for isn't another place. It's belonging.