I love Geraldine Brooks. She writes great books, both novels and non-fiction. However, I am not sure I should have read this book now. My (younger) brother died after three years of battling a brain tumor. As soon as he was buried, his wife was diagnosed with liver cancer and she died nine weeks and a day after him. It wasn't a good time to read about someone else's grief.
Or was it? Geraldine Brooks has a great way of trying to come to terms with the sudden death of her husband and she gives a lot of tips along the way. Not necessarily all practical one though there is one toward the end. She recommends to make a list and call it "Your Life: How It Works" and write down all the little things you do without anyone noticing. Where are certain keys kept? Where do you find passwords? Insurance documents? Etc. etc.
The book is both sad and devastating as well as comforting. At least I thought so. The author does give us hope, though.
Some books she recommends on the same topic, I have read one of them:
Alexander, Elizabeth "The Light of the World"
Didion, Joan "The Year of Magical Thinking"
Oates, Joyce Carol "A Widow's Story" - 2011
From the back cover:
"It was Memorial Day, 2019, when Geraldine Brooks received news that her husband, Tony Horwitz, had collapsed and died, far from home, in the middle of his own book tour. The complex tasks required in the face of such a sudden death left her no time to properly grieve for him.
Three years later, still feeling broken and bereft, she booked a flight to remote Flinders island off the coast of Tasmania. There, she pondered the ways other cultures deal with mourning and finally seized the time and space she needed for her own grief. Alone on a rugged stretch of coast, she revisited a 35-year marriage filled with risk, adventure, humour and love.
A spare and moving memoir that join sthe classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life love affair and a reckoning with the inevitability of loss."
Oh Marianne, I am so sorry for your losses!! That is awful. I am glad that the book gave you hope.
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