“Noble has a focused, tight style, often employing the technique of looking at somewhat discrete items (or memories) and seeking connections among them … Unique eyes look at familiar things and somehow make them seem both odder and more familiar.”—Kirkus

“Stylistically, her essays experiment beautifully with space and sparseness. They often work to create a mood and feel as though they would sound best echoing off the walls of an art gallery or whispered in the dark corners of Jamaica Inn. Noble is a virtuoso in the art of gorgeous sentences … Be with Me Always has much to teach its readers about longing, experimental writing, and the fruits of reading extensively. This collection is sure to be taught in writing classes far and wide. Noble teaches us the truths of the flaneur, to be a good outsider and essayist: It is important to watch and to try, to think and to create.”—Punctuate

“Randon Billings Noble’s Be With Me Always is a tender, graceful collection of essays from a writer whose mission seems clear. Who are we within the context of our desires and longings? How do we function within bodies that are regularly changing? … Reading these essays is tantamount to dancing between lines of longing, looking without seeing, constructing and deconstructing our very essence, and understanding that nothing is really ever as it seems unless and until we see it again, with a fresher and sharper perspective … Be With Me Always works its magic in profound, subtle, seamless ways. The meticulous craftsmanship in the construction of these essays is equally matched by Noble’s beautiful, confident, assured vision.”—Pop Matters

 “Each memory is treated with equal care and caution in Be With Me Always; Noble does not assume a single one will land on her easily, no matter how seemingly simple. For writers who often begin a sentence only to stop themselves and say: is this important enough? is this loud enough? reading Noble’s work might feel like a personal love letter—like a book that gives you permission.” —Barrelhouse

“Noble gives us essays that elevate the rawness of real life with an overarching theme of hauntedness. From hard choices to characters in classic literature, from a near-death experience to past lovers, she has written a book that appeals to readers of both modern pop culture magazines and Emily Brontë.”—Washington City Paper

“Noble powerfully reminds us that hauntings spring from the same desire that propels enduring essays, the desire to live an examined life.”—Brevity 

“The essay, a peek into the nonfictionist’s internal life, is likewise a stay against loneliness, and, to that end, Noble and her collection are fascinating companions indeed … Be with Me Always is a singular addition to women’s nonfiction.”—River Teeth

“The essays in Randon Billings Noble’s dazzlingly honest debut collection explore the varied hauntings that linger through the years and even centuries of human action … They oscillate between fear and fascination with the roads not taken, the selves denied … Noble’s powerful debut invites us to make sense of our own wreckage.  She asks what trails in our own wake and urges us to find opportunity to weave a patchwork self of lived and imaged experiences …”—Mid-American Review, Volume XXXIX, Number 2 (print only)

“This collection of essays is evocative of a ghost story and mystery in one. The essays make us aware of things around us (mirrors, birdsong, paintings, shell casings) or things inside us (grief, nostalgia, vanity, desire) that we didn’t see before but suddenly beckon us … [Noble] bring[s] us to the cusps of danger, and clarity, silence, betrayal and death, then return[s] us to ourselves with insight each time.”—Sweet: A Literary Confection

“Be with Me Always features a range of different types of essays: prose poetry, hermit crab essays, object essays, literary criticism, essays in list form, collage, braided essays, and more. By choosing forms that alternately illuminate, distort, or complicate the subject matter, the forms often speak to the reader as much as Noble’s actual narratives do … Overall, Be with Me Always is a collection of essays that longs for the known and unknown—a search through biologies and histories and literature for the ghosts that continue to haunt many of us, the ghosts that become unexpectedly sacred in the formation of her life and our own.”—Kenyon Review