A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey to peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse
Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.
After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert’s Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.
Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied ways those of other cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia's First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.
A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.
Grief is a rarely predictable and deeply personal emotion. Geraldine Brooks had her world shattered when her husband had a heart attack in the middle of the street. This memoir is told in alternating timelines, the days immediately following his death and a few years later when the author travels to Tasmania to try to honestly deal with her grief. In either timeline, one thing is clear. The grief one feels at the loss of a loved one is deeply personal and never subsides.
This book is for anybody who enjoys reading deeply personal yet rather short memoirs. However, it might not be for you if you are sensitive to the loss of a partner.
Details:
- Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
- Pages: 224
- Publisher: Viking
- Publication Date: 2/4/25
- Buy it Here!
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