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A review by aurelia2
The Archaeology of Loss: Life, Love and the Art of Dying by Sarah Tarlow
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.75
“Grief is your life as it was before, but less. A diminishing. It is a stripping away, or a hollowing out, and it hurts. There is nothing pleasurable in it, but there is a kind of purity.”
This was a difficult book to read, Tarlow's memoir is definitely written by an academic, but suffused with sentiment. There's a ruthless honesty to the writing that feels like it's peeling back the layers to expose the facts underneath. It's upfront about the limits of her memory in terms of events, and doesn't hold back on her own complicated emotions about being forced into the role of a carer. She's not afraid to unmask the darker side of the difficult times, for example at one point admitting jealousy towards cancer or MND patients who can be told a progression or end date to expect. This book feels like a labour of love in the best way. Her husband's condition shares some similarities with my mom's so the memoir often resonated personally. I really enjoyed the wider archaeological perspectives that framed the memoir, and there were multiple references to literature used for her work and similar memoirs and stories.
This was a difficult book to read, Tarlow's memoir is definitely written by an academic, but suffused with sentiment. There's a ruthless honesty to the writing that feels like it's peeling back the layers to expose the facts underneath. It's upfront about the limits of her memory in terms of events, and doesn't hold back on her own complicated emotions about being forced into the role of a carer. She's not afraid to unmask the darker side of the difficult times, for example at one point admitting jealousy towards cancer or MND patients who can be told a progression or end date to expect. This book feels like a labour of love in the best way. Her husband's condition shares some similarities with my mom's so the memoir often resonated personally. I really enjoyed the wider archaeological perspectives that framed the memoir, and there were multiple references to literature used for her work and similar memoirs and stories.