Scan barcode
liralen's review
3.0
There's enough material in this for two separate books, and early on in the book I wasn't sure they fit together, but in the end the background -- the first booksworth -- makes the contemporary parts much more complicated.
First: The author is from old money, from the kind of New England family that sails and rides horses and is thrifty within its excess -- they live in a mansion in the summer and a different mansion in the winter, but they wear hand-me-downs and use packing crates for furniture when they make a temporary move -- and whose children are taught very early on to keep a stiff upper lip. Forbes is a direct descendant of [a:Ralph Waldo Emerson|12080|Ralph Waldo Emerson|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1393555704p2/12080.jpg] and John Murray Forbes (and it would appear that her extended family includes John Kerry, though I'm not sure exactly what that family tree looks like); her home growing up was steeped in the kind of history that built New England. Guestbooks dating back to the 1800s, letters from major players in American history, curtains considered important to the history of American textiles and destined for a museum.
Second: The author's older daughter died in 2004, at the age of six, from a rare genetic disorder. Much of the book is about the time leading up to Charlotte's death -- when they first found out about the disorder and when she succumbed to it -- and then the author's grief afterwards. What helped the author, eventually, was delving into the spirit world in search of some connection to Charlotte.
Either of these could have worked on its own. The story of grief, of the loss of a child, is not one that needs the background of a privileged upbringing in order to resonate. That story of privileged upbringing, alone, might take more work, but there's an incredible amount of family history to draw on, alongside the author's quest, as a young adult, to throw off that history (and seek new money instead) and then her eventual return to the fold.
The family history is included in part to explain why the author was willing to believe in ghosts and in communication with the dead -- she grew up in houses inhabited by ghosts -- but frankly, that's not the draw of the background. It's not worked in especially well (lumped in near the beginning; if you're finding it a slog, know that it moves back to the less detached modern day in chapter 4), but Forbes' upbringing ended up playing a huge role in the way she grieved, and the way she didn't. This was a family where, when she slammed her fingers in a window, trapping herself, she was afraid to call out for help because causing that level of disturbance just wasn't done; later, not long after Charlotte's death, she says this: Nobody had told me that I couldn't cry in view of the others, but nobody needed to tell me. In being stoic I was simply following through on forty years of conditioning (89-90).
Forbes searches for peace in visits with clairvoyants and psychics -- and has experiences that are, even to a skeptic, hard to dismiss -- but what is far more interesting, to me, is her sense that she just has to be able to open up and hit rock bottom, that doing so is more than anything a relief because once she's hit bottom she can claw her way up from the depths of grief. She can pinpoint that moment, that bottom, because its manifestation is so at odds with the way she was raised. She can see how differently she and her husband are processing grief, and how they are growing into new people because of what they've been through -- what they're still going through -- and how that's gradually splitting them apart.
It is, unsurprisingly, a very sad book, although with a distinct sense of growing peace by the end. I didn't connect with it especially well -- possibly because of the relatively dry chunk of family history so early on; possibly simply because I am not a parent and have never experienced that kind of grief -- but I'd call it complex and, oh, complete.
I received a free copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway.
First: The author is from old money, from the kind of New England family that sails and rides horses and is thrifty within its excess -- they live in a mansion in the summer and a different mansion in the winter, but they wear hand-me-downs and use packing crates for furniture when they make a temporary move -- and whose children are taught very early on to keep a stiff upper lip. Forbes is a direct descendant of [a:Ralph Waldo Emerson|12080|Ralph Waldo Emerson|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1393555704p2/12080.jpg] and John Murray Forbes (and it would appear that her extended family includes John Kerry, though I'm not sure exactly what that family tree looks like); her home growing up was steeped in the kind of history that built New England. Guestbooks dating back to the 1800s, letters from major players in American history, curtains considered important to the history of American textiles and destined for a museum.
Second: The author's older daughter died in 2004, at the age of six, from a rare genetic disorder. Much of the book is about the time leading up to Charlotte's death -- when they first found out about the disorder and when she succumbed to it -- and then the author's grief afterwards. What helped the author, eventually, was delving into the spirit world in search of some connection to Charlotte.
Either of these could have worked on its own. The story of grief, of the loss of a child, is not one that needs the background of a privileged upbringing in order to resonate. That story of privileged upbringing, alone, might take more work, but there's an incredible amount of family history to draw on, alongside the author's quest, as a young adult, to throw off that history (and seek new money instead) and then her eventual return to the fold.
The family history is included in part to explain why the author was willing to believe in ghosts and in communication with the dead -- she grew up in houses inhabited by ghosts -- but frankly, that's not the draw of the background. It's not worked in especially well (lumped in near the beginning; if you're finding it a slog, know that it moves back to the less detached modern day in chapter 4), but Forbes' upbringing ended up playing a huge role in the way she grieved, and the way she didn't. This was a family where, when she slammed her fingers in a window, trapping herself, she was afraid to call out for help because causing that level of disturbance just wasn't done; later, not long after Charlotte's death, she says this: Nobody had told me that I couldn't cry in view of the others, but nobody needed to tell me. In being stoic I was simply following through on forty years of conditioning (89-90).
Forbes searches for peace in visits with clairvoyants and psychics -- and has experiences that are, even to a skeptic, hard to dismiss -- but what is far more interesting, to me, is her sense that she just has to be able to open up and hit rock bottom, that doing so is more than anything a relief because once she's hit bottom she can claw her way up from the depths of grief. She can pinpoint that moment, that bottom, because its manifestation is so at odds with the way she was raised. She can see how differently she and her husband are processing grief, and how they are growing into new people because of what they've been through -- what they're still going through -- and how that's gradually splitting them apart.
It is, unsurprisingly, a very sad book, although with a distinct sense of growing peace by the end. I didn't connect with it especially well -- possibly because of the relatively dry chunk of family history so early on; possibly simply because I am not a parent and have never experienced that kind of grief -- but I'd call it complex and, oh, complete.
I received a free copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway.
rain_97's review against another edition
I always feel I can't rate a nonfiction book because it's so personal and very unlike writing a work of fiction; with this book particularly, I can not judge a person's grief. However, Forbes spent an extraordinary amount of time writing more about her blue-bloodline than anything else. I was expecting more in terms of her grief process and how she coped but got a familiar vibe that she was trying to write a transcendental aspect of everything. Her feelings were too detached from what I would expect when writing from a first-person point of view. Grief is hard and I can imagine it really takes so much to work on a marriage and still be a parent to other children. I give her kudos for doing the best she could.
More...