November 2012 Books

My foray into WWII continues with Jeff Shaara's excellent historical fiction series.

The Rising Tide: A Novel of World War II (#1) by Jeff Shaara
Published: 2006
Rating: 5
Goodreads

This book focuses on the North African conflict of the Allied forces under General Dwight D. Eisenhower against the formidable German general Erwin Rommel, nicknamed The Desert Fox.  Other larger-than-life generals who make their mark in this conflict are General George Patton (US) and General Bernard Montgomery (British).  From North Africa, the war goes to Sicily and then into Italy.

The Steel Wave: A Novel of World War II (#2) by Jeff Shaara
Published: 2008
Rating: 5
Goodreads

This book covers the planning and execution of Operation Overlord or the D-Day cross-channel invasion up to the Battle of The Bulge.  While perhaps common knowledge to many, I did not know that part of the success of D-Day was the German's acceptance of an elaborately constructed ruse - Patton's command of a fake army intending to invade Calais.  I also did not know that horrific weather threatened to postpone the invasion and that it was up to Eisenhower to make the final determination whether or not to proceed.  Once the green light was given, he wrote and carried in his pocket, a very short speech taking full responsibility if the invasion had failed.  Thank God he never had to deliver it.  I couldn't read fast enough.

No Less Than Victory: A Novel of World War II (#3) by Jeff Shaara
Published: 2009
Rating: 5
Goodreads

The book begins with Hitler's last counter-offensive which took the Allied forces by surprise and became the infamous Battle of the Bulge. It ends with his suicide, the surrender of Germany and the disclosure of the Nazi's "final solution" to the Jewish problem.  Another riveting book.

Over Veteran's Day, a number of military movies were being shown on TV.  My husband and I watched George C. Scott in his iconic role as Patton.

Nothing was the Same by Kay Redfield Jamison
Published: 2009
Rating: 4
Goodreads

I picked this up from the library and once started, I read within a couple of days.   What I found the most interesting was her clear articulation of the difference between grief and clinical depression.  I wrote down many quotes for further reflection and perhaps a post on Josh's blog.  I may need to purchase this book for my library.

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1) by J. R. R. Tolkien
Published: 1954
Rating: 5
Goodreads

I love the LOTR trilogy movies by Peter Jackson, have been to New Zealand and seen some of the landscape that was filmed in the movies but have never read the books.  I did try several years ago but got hopelessly bored and stopped.

I am not sure what is different now - maybe my reading of classics over the past couple of years has heightened the appreciation of good prose.  After reading and thoroughly enjoying The Hobbit, it was time to try The Fellowship of the Ring again.  I loved it!

King Lear by Shakespeare

King Lear by William Shakespeare (No Fear Shakespeare version)
Published: 1608
Rating: 4
Goodreads

This play is about a dysfunctional family headed by an old king who prefers flattery to truth and so is blinded from seeing the loyal people in his life, daughter Cordelia and nobleman Kent.  He rashly disinherits Cordelia and divides the kingdom between his other daughters, Regan and Goneril, both consumed with greed and ambition which breeds jealousy, rage, cruelty, violence and sheer evil.  They remind me of the horrible, cold, unfeeling Lady Macbeth.

In a parallel story line, the Earl of Gloucester also turns against the loyal child, Edgar, in favor of the manipulative bastard, Edmund whose conniving and theatrics remind me of Iago in Othello.  Both fathers suffer tremendously from trusting the wrong child(ten).  The mutilation of Gloucester is one of the most gory, intense scenes I have read thus far.  And similar to Hamlet, dead bodies litter the stage by the end of the play.

One reviewer on Goodreads made some comparisons between King Lear and The Oedipus Trilogy (Oedipus the King, Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus) by Sophocles.  I agree.  It is so gratifying to see connections between great works of literature.

• Edgar leading blind Gloucester - Antigone leading blind Oedipus
• Siblings fight for overall rule of the kingdom with disastrous consequences
• Dutiful daughter - Cordelia and Antigone 

My favorite quotes:

Cordelia is being asked by King Lear to speak her love for him, as her sister's flattering tongues have done.  She feels that true love and honor is shown by actions and so says:  "I cannot heave my heart into my mouth" (1.1.90-91).

A most intense verbal thrashing given by a disguised Kent to Oswald, Goneril's steward who gives aid in her conspiracies: 

Oswald:  What dost thou know me for? 

Kent:  A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound-filth, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave; a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service; and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel birth; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition (2.2.12-21).   Wow, Kent, what do you really think?

In my reading, I make note of sentences that sing.  A disguised Edgar is giving his father a made-up description of himself:  Wine I loved deeply, dice dearly, and in woman outparamoured the Turk.  False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand - hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey (3.4.83-86).

March 2012 Books - Poetry, Plays and Survivor Memoirs

In March, our family has been remembering Josh in extra special ways as it was three years on the 18th.  It is apropos that I read these three genres; poetry, tragedies and survivor memoirs.

How To Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry by Edward Hirsch
Published: 1999
Rating: 4
Goodreads
My review coming soon.

Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt
Published: 2010
Rating: 4
Goodreads

I saw this Feb 2010 review in the Washington Post and remember thinking, I need to read this book.  I would recommend this quick read to parents, siblings and spouses who have lost a loved one.

There are a number of thoughts that I could relate to - writing "YES!!" in the margins.

"I seethed at those who spoke of Amy's death in the cliches of modern usage, such as "passing" and "closure." 

"The trouble with a close family is that it suffers closely, too."

"Odd that I seem to know Amy more completely in death than I did when she was alive."

"Grief is a lifelong process for every one of us...one year is no time at all." 

After A Funeral by Diana Athill
Published: 1986
Rating: 2
Goodreads
My thoughts on Josh's blog

The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief & Healing edited by Kevin Young
Published: 2010
Rating: 4
Goodreads
My review coming shortly
Post on Josh's blog: "The Dead" by Billy Collins and original poem: "Where He Lay"

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron
Published: 1990
Rating: 5
Goodreads
My thoughts on Josh's blog 

I was profoundly moved by my reading of this short but powerful book last summer but for some reason, the pages of quotes, thoughts and questions in my journal never made it to either blog.  However, while reading Athill's book, After A Funeral, and the suicidal thoughts of her friend Did, I was reminded of Styron's words and wanted to re-read the book and share my thoughts.

If you happen to read Styron's memoir, I would highly recommend another Styron memoir, written by his daughter, Alexandria called Reading My Father.  In it, she speaks of the profound response to her father's memoir, from the thousands who suffered from depression, making him more famous to the general public than any of his novels ever could.  It is a fascinating coda to his life.

Audiocourse: Iliad of Homer by Professor Elizabeth Vandiver
Rating: 5

I am reading the Iliad and thought it would be helpful to listen to this course.  I would highly recommend anything by Professor Vandiver - she has a gift of making the material accessible and interesting.

Before I Say Goodbye by Ruth Picardie
Published: 1998
Rating: 4
Goodreads

I found this slim book in a local library book sale.  It is not for the faint of heart.  It is the raw, honest writing of a brave woman who died from an aggressive form of breast cancer in September 1997, less than a year from the initial diagnosis.  She was happily married and a new mother of one-year-old twins.

A free lance writer for numerous British publications, she chronicled her journey towards death in a series of poignant articles in the Observer.  These articles as well as email correspondences with close friend and letters received by Observer readers were pulled together by Ruth's husband and sister for publication.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Published: 1603
Rating: 5
Goodreads

Thank goodness for the "No Fear" versions of Shakespeare.  Being generous, I would have gotten about 60% on my own so I needed it!  It's nice to know the context of such famous quotes as "to thine own self be true" and "To be or not to be?  That is the question."

I am listening to Professor Clare Kinney's lecture on Hamlet and realize that my reading is very much through the lens of Josh's death. Everything I read is filtered through that monumental event because it has fundamentally changed me and how I look at things. See two posts on Josh's blog:  Death, Grief and Suicide in Hamlet Part I and Part II.

The Iliad of Homer
Translated by Richmond Lattimore (Professor Vandiver's suggested translation)
First published: 750 BC
Rating: 5
Goodreads 
Helpful resources: audio course (see above),  The Great Books: A Journey Through 2,500 Years of the West's Classic Literature by Anthony O'Hear, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton.

Prior to reading, these were my preconceived ideas about The Iliad:  ancient literature, must know Greek to understand therefore inaccessible to the general public, uninteresting, old, irrelevant, boring, very difficult read so why bother?  Read full post.

Electra in The Complete Plays of Sophocles
Translated by Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb
First published: 420 BC
Bantam Classic Edition: 1982
Rating: 4
Goodreads
Helpful resource: The Great Books: A Journey Through 2,500 Years of the West's Classic Literature by Anthony O'Hear.

Even though I have been drawn to books that deal with deep human suffering, the tragedies of Sophocles that I have read thus far, Ajax and Electra are tragic to the nth degree.  There is nothing uplifting in either play and from O'Hear's summary of the Oedipus trilogy or Theban plays, I don't think Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus or Antigone will be any different.   Nevertheless, I plan to read them

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Published: 1605
Rating: 4
Other reviews: Joy's Book Blog, Rebecca Reads
Goodreads

I read the No Fear Shakespeare version of Macbeth in which the original play is written on the left side of the page and the easy-to-understand paraphrase on the right.

I began with with the original text and understood about 75% on my own.  The 25% I would've missed if not for the paraphrase was enough to have dampened my understanding and appreciation of the work.  Here is an example:  "The eye wink at the hand, yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see." Paraphrase:  "I won't let my eye look at what my hand is doing, but in the end I'm still going to do that thing I'd be horrified to see" (I, IV, 54-55).

At the beginning of the play, we are introduced to Macbeth, a courageous Scottish general fighting on behalf of his king.  After a series of victorious battles, he hears a prophecy from 3 witches that set he and Lady Macbeth on a path of wanton destruction and murder, ending with their own deaths.

While Macbeth struggles with his conscious, Lady Macbeth does not.  She is heartless and ruthless, almost inhuman.  The only other villainous character I could think of that is remotely similar to Lady Macbeth is from a fairy tale - the Evil Queen in Snow White.  Some chilling quotes:

Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, un-sex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
of direst cruelty.  Make thick my blood.
Stop up the access and passage to remorse (I, V, 41-45).

The extent of her willingness to do what was promised:

I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I sworn as you
Have done to this (I, VII, 54-59).

Macbeth says of her:

Bring forth men-children only,
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing by males (I, VII, 72-74).

Macbeth is set and ready to commit the ultimate treason; regicide of the good, noble and beloved King Duncan.

I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show.
False face must hide what the false heart doth know (I, VII, 79-82).

After killing the king, Macbeth goes a bit batty and foreshadows the sleepless nights that he and Lady Macbeth will suffer...no more baths, balms and nourishment for them.  I love this description of sleep.

"Sleep not more!
Macbeth does murder sleep" - the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
the death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
chief nourisher in life's feast (II,II, 33-38).

Once Macbeth is king, the 3 witches continue to cause mischief.  I now know where this famous couplet comes from:

Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble (IV, I, 10-11)

This play is about unchecked ambition.  About a man, egged on by his conscious-less wife, unable to trust his fate to Fate, and willing to do whatever vile act necessary to secure a destiny believed to be rightfully his.  Macbeth's ambition eventually drives Reason away, shown by his decision to kill Macduff's innocent wife and children.  Macduff is a nobleman who supports Malcolm, King Duncan's son and rightful heir:

From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand.  And even now,
To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:
The castle of Macduff I will surprise,
Seize upon Fife, give to th' edge o' th' sword
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunately souls
That trace him in his line (IV, I, 147-154). 

The words below are spoken by a Scottish nobleman to Macduff after he hears of the horrific murders. These two sentences articulate why I write in my journal, Josh's blog and this blog.  See this post. 

Give sorrow words.  The grief that does not speak

Whispers the o'refraught heart and bids it break (IV, III, 211-212)

Murder begets murder.  This is Macbeth cry when he hears of Lady Macbeth's death by self-murder:

Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more (V, V, 23-26).

In the last battle, a father loses his son.  Here is another "grief quote" that speaks to me:

Your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end (V, VIII, 44-46).

At the end, Macbeth is overtaken and vengefully killed by Macduff, who cuts off his head and presents the grisly prize to the new King Malcolm.  Poetic justice, albeit after much violence and bloodshed, finally reigns supreme.  What kind of legacy does Macbeth and Lady Macbeth leave behind?  Not much when one considers the last speech of the play, recited by King Malcolm in which they are referred to as the "dead butcher and his fiendlike queen" (V,VIII, 69).

I have rated this play a "4", having no context as to how Macbeth compares to Shakespeare's other plays.  By virtue of the number of quotes (and I could've have written many more), I would not be surprised if, after reading other works, I later revise it to a "5".

"The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger: Read-A-Long

Published: 1951
Read: 2011
Genre: Fiction
Setting: NYC 1949
Rating: 5
List: 1,001
Review: Goodreads







Love it, love it, love it.  And I am only in the first couple chapters.  I hope this love affair will continue.  Because I am getting so much out of my reading, thinking and journaling through the chapters, I want to take my time.  So it will be my own "read-a-long" with no structure or deadline.  The links to the posts (on Josh's blog) are below.

Chapters 1-3   (posted 6/7/11)
Chapters 4 - 10  (posted 6/13/11)
Chapters 11 - end   (posted 6/30/11)

This book reminds me of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain as both protagonists are adolescent boys who are non-conformists at heart, challenging and rebelling against social expectations, not because they are bad but more because they do not see the point.  They look at adults with skepticism and distrust, having seen clear evidence of hypocrisy and in Holden's word, phoniness.

Twain and Salinger excel at capturing the thoughts, musings and speech of the boys, each in their respective time periods. Of the two master plots in fiction, "stranger comes to town" and "hero takes a journey", both are the latter.

I would re-read, but for different reasons.  Twain's story chronicles the adventures of Huck and Jim, a run-away slave, as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.  Although Huck is an uneducated, homeless boy, his honest, simple and genuine character shines through, making for a "feel good" story.

Salinger's story is much darker.  Holden is alone in his journey which leads him to an increasingly depressed state.  My interest this book stems from trying to glean whatever I can, via fiction or non-fiction sources, the fragile state of an adolescent boy's mind.  To help me better understand what could've been going on in my beloved boy's head.

Takeaways:  Read other books about adolescents

• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

"The Memoir Club" by Laura Kalpakian

Published: 2005
Read: 2011
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 2
Review: Goodreads










I picked this up at the library based on the title, thinking it would be an interesting and quick read.  The plot is pretty straightforward.  A group of strangers with various motivations take a memoir class.  After finishing, several members continue weekly meetings with the instructor and in the course of sharing their memoir writings, strong friendships develop.

The book held my interest long enough to finish but I will not pursue reading other works by this author. Regardless, I can always find meaningful quotes.

One particular character, a Dr. Caryn Henley is dealing with a horrific tragedy.  She was married with two small children and had an affair which ended her marriage.  Her ex had taken the kids on a trip and on the way home, the plane had crashed.  There were no survivors.  Her guilt is overwhelming and threatens to crush her.  She struggles constantly with suicidal thoughts.

Quotes from her grief journey:

"She could not evade them, but they eluded language."

"I like to dwell with my losses.  It's the only place I can bear to dwell.  Every day that I do not shoot myself I have endorsed life."

"Why can't I die of a broken heart?  It would be so much easier than living with it."

"I know that the body goes on, dragging the broken heart behind it like a ball and chain, and all you want is to be rid of that broken heart.  Even it it means being rid of your life."

Quotes about writing a memoir:

"Your memoir should reveal to you questions you have not heretofore been able to articulate.  That's one of its functions."

"If you put a sort of narrative over your life, over your experience, you do impose structure on it, even meaning." 

 "Clarity is the responsibility of the writer.  Not the reader."

I had to write this quote down:

"We take men into our bodies and expel children."

"The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion

Published: 2005

Read: 2011

Genre: Memoir

Rating: 4

Review: Goodreads







A quick read with lots of dog eared pages, underlined passages and notes in the margins.  This is a memoir told in snippets or snapshots of memories and flashbacks interspersed with the present - how she dealt with the sudden death of her husband.  I don't get the title.

I agree with the Chicago Sun-Times: "Unforgettable...both personal and universal.  She has given the reader an eloquent starting point in which to navigate through the wilderness of grief."  If I ever wrote a book about my grief journey, I would want this to be said.

A more extensive post with quotes and my thoughts of this highly recommended book is on Josh's blog. 

"A Grief Observed" by C. S Lewis

Published: 1961
Read: 2011
Genre: memoir
Rating: 4
Review: Goodreads







This has been on my list of books to read for quite a while, really since Josh died almost two year ago.  I received a comment on a previous post that it was a most helpful book.  So I finally got it at the library and read it in one night - while in a hotel, traveling for work.

When C.S. Lewis' beloved wife, "H" died, he poured out his feelings in a journal which is the content of this short but powerful book.  The pain, grief, sorrow, and despair radiates from the pages.  Although his experience is of spousal loss, the use of analogies to describe his deep feelings, apply to other losses such as mine.

Analogies of loss/grief:
Getting over the loss of a loved one is like getting over the loss of a limb - it will never happen.  See this post from Josh's blog for the quote and my thoughts.

Grief like a spiral:

"For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs.  Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?  But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?" 

Grief like a long valley:

"Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.  As I've already noted, not every bend does.  Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago. That is when you wonder whether the valley isn't a circular trench.  But it isn't.  There are partial recurrences, but the sequence doesn't repeat."

My thoughts:
I agree.  Along these lines, I've likened grief to being on a journey, unwelcome but necessary.  To delay or deny the journey, however difficult, will only bring harm (see this post for more thoughts).

I've also thought about grief being like an archery target with the center bulls-eye surrounded by concentric circles.  If THE LOSS is the center and the circles are various points in time, clearly even 3, 4 or 5 years after the death does not move the bereaved very far from the middle.  In other words, time does not distance someone from their loss as quickly as one might think.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, it will soon be two years since our son died.  In some ways, it feels like forever; sometimes, like yesterday.  Either way, his absence is louder than his presence ever was.  And I don't see this diminishing any time soon.

"How Reading Changed My Life" by Anna Quindlen

Published: 1998
Read: 2011
Genre: Non-fiction
Rating: 4
Review: Goodreads









A very quick read by a bestselling author whose love of books radiates from the pages.  She attributes this love to a certain restlessness as a child, and says this:

"So I wandered the world thought books.  I went to Victorian England in the pages of Middlemarch and A Little Princess, and to Saint Petersburg before the fall of the czar with Anna Karenina.  I went to Tara, and Manderley, and Thornfield Hall, all those great houses, with their high ceilings and high drama, as I read Gone with the Wind and Jane Eyre."

A number of other quotes from the book are on this post so I will not re-type them here.  I do however, want to write about some thoughts she has on why and what women read and how this differs from men.  Despite being broad generalizations that will not be true for everyone, I would like to explore further.

"...I began to think that women read differently than men....a Gallup poll taken in 1991 showed that women were more likely than men to find reading a more relaxing pastime than watching television....Some bookstore owners say their women customers are more likely to read novels, while the men more often choose biographies and history. Perhaps women feel more of a need to escape their own lives and take up those of others than men do."

"But it also seemed to me...that women seem to see reading not only as a solitary activity but as an opportunity for emotional connection, not just to the characters in a novel but to those others who are reading or have read the same novel themselves."

And:

"This ability of a book to lesson isolation is important, not simply for personal growth, but for cultural and societal growth as well."

I am also remined of a quote by Maureen Corrigan in her book, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading.  Here, she muses as to why she and fellow bookworms read:

"...search for authenticity.  We want to get closer to the heart of things, and sometimes even a few good sentences contained in an otherwise unexceptional book can crystallize vague feelings, fleeting physical sensations, or sometimes, profound epiphanies...Readers, professional or casual, are alert to passages in a book that illuminate what was previously shadowy and formless."

It is the combination of these thoughts that speak to me.  My life is now segregated in terms of "pre" and "post Josh" - like a thick black line or better said, a chasm that irrevocably separates my two selves.

"Pre-Josh", I read novels.  Quickly.  The faster, the better.  I wanted to connect with the characters and get lost in their story. These kinds of books are aptly called "brain candy" by some.  "Post-Josh", I read for "emotional connection" and to "lesson isolation" as Quindlen says.  I also read to "crystallize vague feelings" and illuminate the "shadowy and formless" as said by Corrigan.

In fact, everything I read now is with a filter - plain and simple: Josh's death. I am searching for authenticity or truth.  I look for meaning and understanding.  I want to find the answer to THE unanswerable question: "Why, Josh, why?"

I was thinking about this over two weeks ago and drew a funnel in my journal.  At the top, where the width is greatest, I wrote the following: dreams, writing, journaling, books, thoughts, quotes, ideas, conversations, stories, memoirs, fiction, survivor of suicide books, parental bereavement books, lyrics, movies.  At the bottom of the funnel, is THE question.  After drawing this, I wrote:

"So, as opposed to others, who have no real issues, pain, sorrow, grief or tragedy, and read just to read, because they like books and have been bookish all their lives, I read and write for salvation.  To avoid or bypass mental illness, post traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, my own temptations of suicide. To be able to function.  Reading and writing is a life support.  It sustains me.  Guides me.  Illuminates.  Forces me to follow thoughts and ideas that would previously be unknown or simmering in my subconscious, wreaking havoc.  Reveals what is dormant - thoughts or feelings that lie beneath conscious thought.  If left untouched or not brought to the light of scrutiny, it could in fact, cause mental illness, breakdown, even madness."

It surprised me then, how quickly and easily these words flew from pen to paper.  And as I re-read and type them now, they still ring true.

Grieving is a lonely business.  I would not survive if not for the companionship offered in books and in my journal.

"Every Last One" by Anna Quindlen

Published: 2010
Read: 2011
Genre: Fiction
Setting: Vermont town, modern time
Rating: 4
Review: Goodreads
Website devoted to her work





I saw a review of the book in the Washington Post awhile ago and remember thinking, "this is just up my alley.  Tragedy occurs in the life of a regular mom which she has to survive."  I am reminded of the book, "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading, where Maureen Corrigan identifies a sub genre called the female version of the extreme adventure story.  In fact, she says her thoughts about this genre began after reading Quindlen's 1998 novel, Black and Blue.  The protagonist of that book was an abused wife and mother who eventually runs from her husband but lives in mortal fear for the day he tracks them down.

As opposed to the male extreme adventure story made popular by Into Thin Air or The Perfect Storm where men are in life-and-death situations, often against elements such as a mountain or the sea, Corrigan says the women in the female version are working just as hard to survive, but their settings are domestic.  Their struggles are internal - emotional and/or psychological.   I would say this book fits into Corrigan's sub genre.

"This is my life:  The alarm goes off at five-thirty with the murmuring of a public-radio announcer, telling me that there has been a coup in Chad, a tornado in Texas." 

With this first sentence, Quindlen thrusts us in the middle of Mary Beth Latham's busy life.  She is a wife of almost 20 years, a mother of three teenage children and has a successful landscaping business.  The spark has gone out of her marriage as depicted in the following quote:

"I can't quite recall, or evoke, that strange and powerful feeling that made me yearn to be with him every moment of every day, that made me think "till death do us part" sounded wonderful instead of simply like a very, very long time."

Her kids are her life - like me and most moms that I know.  She struggles with wanting intimacy with Ruby, her beautiful, independent seventeen year old daughter and with her fraternal twin boys, Alex and Max who are in middle school.   While Ruby is fine now, she had struggled with anorexia.  Alex is the athlete and popular one, while Max is the musician, quiet and depressed.  While reading the book, I was drawn into their lives with a pit in my stomach as I knew something really bad was going to happen to this family.  A family with issues, but what family doesn't?

NOTE: This book is helpful in my grief journey so the following contains spoilers.

Then "IT" happens.  With me, it was the suicide death of my seventeen year old son.  With Mary Beth, it was the nearly total disintegration of her family.  And of her.  The second half of the book is a story of survival.  Some of her thoughts brought me to tears because I can relate.  To her grief, her sorrow, her guilt, her struggle to cope, her emptiness.  

Meaningful quotes:

"One of the worst aspects of living now on the far shore is that across the chasm I can see my glib unknowing self.  I despise that woman, her foolish little worries and her cheap sympathies.  She knew nothing.  But I can't truly wish on her what I know now."

"My memories are booby-trapped."

"I have two selves now, too, the one that goes out into the world and says what sound like the right things and nods and listens and even sometimes smiles, and the real woman, who watches her in wonder, who is nothing but a wound, a wound that will not stop throbbing except when it is anesthetized.  I know what the world wants: It wants me to heal.  But to heal I would have to forget and if I forget, my family truly dies."

"It was not so much that I wanted to die; it was just that I could not bear the incessant feeling of being alive.  And then it occurred to me that I was already dead; that what was left behind was a carapace, like the shells of cicadas...I had been full, of creating children, of taking care, of tasks and plans and a big bright future, and now all that was left was a translucent skin of what had once been my life."

"The worst part are all the things they are missing.  All the things they won't get to have."

It has difficult to answer the question, "How are you?" from well-meaning friends.  Mary Beth's best friend comes to stay with her one weekend and wants to know.  Mary Beth can't answer her and thinks:

"Why should I share what no one wants to know?  Why should I listen to the words of those who know nothing?  I can predict what they will say:  It will get easier.  Lie.  You can handle this.  Lie.  Time heals.  Lie.  Time just passes. Slowly."

This is a book of a woman coping with a loss so great, it could drown her completely.  But because she has a son to look after, to care for, to live for, she will survive.  She must survive.  

I feel the same. 

Takeways:

Other books by Anna Quindlen

• Black and Blue
• One True Thing
• Good Dog. Stay
• How Reading Changed My Life