A poetic new essay collection in which the symbols of Renaissance-era tarot brush up against life in a changing world.

In 2018, author Jessica Friedmann bought her first deck of tarot cards, a facsimile copy of the Tarot de Marseille. This 15th-century deck, with its unfamiliar images, sparked a deep immersion in the art, symbols, myths, and misrepresentations of Renaissance-era tarot.

Over the years that followed, and as tarot became a part of her daily rhythm, Friedmann’s life in country New South Wales was touched by floods and by drought, by bushfires and the pandemic, creating an environment in which the only constant was change.

22 Impressions- notes from the Major Arcana uses the Tarot de Marseille as a touchstone for these years, blending historical research, art history, and critical insights with personal reflections. In these essays, Friedmann demonstrates how the cards of the Major Arcana can be used as a lens through which to examine the unexpectedness - and subtle beauty - of 21st-century life.

Praise for Things That Helped- ‘Things That Helped is a beautiful book - heartfelt, fiercely intelligent, and urgent. It is a powerful affirmation of friendship, family, art, and love, and how these things might shape a life, and give it strength, and it does not shy away from the complex, often painful, and sometimes bloody experiences of womanhood and motherhood. It is fascinating, luscious, and engrossing, and, despite its difficult subject matter, an absolute joy to read.’ -Fiona Wright, author of Small Acts of Disappearance

Praise for Things That Helped- ‘ A n extraordinary account of extreme postnatal depression, as seen from the eye of the storm.’ -Viv Groskop, The Guardian

Praise for Things That Helped- ‘While the occasion for this book is Friedmann’s experience of post-partum depression, Things That Helped points to the larger question of becoming a writer-mother, and the ways a traumatic splitting of the self might relate to a creative one, and how, in consciously reintegrating aspects of self, a powerful, self-aware and writerly subjectivity might emerge … There is an analogic intelligence at work, a sense of metaphor pushing behind each piece of the book, finding connections that weave each part of with others … There are skeins here, not a single narrative strand, and it is in their braiding that hopes of making and loving are recovered.’ -Sydney Review of Books