Scan barcode
kickpleat's review against another edition
5.0
A beautiful memoir about loss, grieving and hope, but without the mushy drippiness one would expect. I only teared up once, when after holding their stillborn baby, her husband says "I didn't know what I was feeling. Then I realized it was seeing someone and knowing immediately that you love him." Reading this is like being privy to to McCracken's diary, moving back and forth through time and place. Moving forward but holding on. I loved it.
mcipher's review against another edition
4.0
How did she manage to make something so sad also so funny and beautiful? This was a brilliant book. The Dwarves of Sorrow was probably my favorite part - after reading that phrase, how can you NOT run out and read the whole thing? Why are you still reading this?
chandlerleighk's review against another edition
5.0
A beautiful book to begin year 27 with. I fully needed this book to process some similar grief. I just felt this book to my core.
lfulla's review against another edition
5.0
"After most deaths, I imagine, the awfulness lies in how everything's changed: you no longer recognize the form of your days. There's a hole. It's person shaped and follows you everywhere, to bed, to the dinner table, in the car.
For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We'd been waiting to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old life."
I don't know that I would recommend this book to any friends, but for me it was touching. McCracken puts into words many of the same feelings I have. Our stories are different, but there are some things that are universal. And it helps to hear those things.
"Twice now I have heard the story of someone who knows someone who's had a stillborn child since Pudding has died, and it's all I can do not to book a flight immediately, to show up somewhere I'm not wanted, just so that I can say It happened to me, too, because it meant so much to me to hear it. It happened to me, too, means: It's not your fault. And You are not a freak of nature. And This does not have to be a secret."
For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We'd been waiting to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old life."
I don't know that I would recommend this book to any friends, but for me it was touching. McCracken puts into words many of the same feelings I have. Our stories are different, but there are some things that are universal. And it helps to hear those things.
"Twice now I have heard the story of someone who knows someone who's had a stillborn child since Pudding has died, and it's all I can do not to book a flight immediately, to show up somewhere I'm not wanted, just so that I can say It happened to me, too, because it meant so much to me to hear it. It happened to me, too, means: It's not your fault. And You are not a freak of nature. And This does not have to be a secret."
katulka2's review against another edition
5.0
I just read this book in one sitting.
I'm feeling like I have just been through a horrific ordeal, completely out of sympathy. I hadn't read Elizabeth McCracken before but I developed real affection for her, through moments of dark humor and profound tenderness alike. I share much of her superstitiousness and caution, having always felt both mystified and a bit creeped out by people who name their future children in the fourth week of pregnancy and go public with the news so early on. It's just so jinx-y! This story perfectly confirms those feelings.
Other reviewers have compared this book to Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, but besides the obvious similar subject matter, I disagree. Didion's writing was detached in the way of someone reflecting on a tragedy too soon afterwards. McCracken's writing is much deeper and more evocative than most po-mo memoirs of this sort. In particular, her parenthetical undercurrents of thought, in which she second-guesses herself and repeats her devastating reality, comprise possibly the truest rendering of grief I've ever encountered.
Friends: Has anybody else read this and want to talk about it? I could go on but was trying to avoid spoilers...
I'm feeling like I have just been through a horrific ordeal, completely out of sympathy. I hadn't read Elizabeth McCracken before but I developed real affection for her, through moments of dark humor and profound tenderness alike. I share much of her superstitiousness and caution, having always felt both mystified and a bit creeped out by people who name their future children in the fourth week of pregnancy and go public with the news so early on. It's just so jinx-y! This story perfectly confirms those feelings.
Other reviewers have compared this book to Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, but besides the obvious similar subject matter, I disagree. Didion's writing was detached in the way of someone reflecting on a tragedy too soon afterwards. McCracken's writing is much deeper and more evocative than most po-mo memoirs of this sort. In particular, her parenthetical undercurrents of thought, in which she second-guesses herself and repeats her devastating reality, comprise possibly the truest rendering of grief I've ever encountered.
Friends: Has anybody else read this and want to talk about it? I could go on but was trying to avoid spoilers...
lindzebird's review against another edition
2.0
I probably shouldn't be giving a rating, I didn't read this all the way through, but I got about half way through and felt that I wasn't learning anything and didn't feel compelled to read any longer. I guess my experience of loss was different from the authors and I just couldn't find myself relating.