A review by garleighc
The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End by Katie Roiphe

4.0

I had never given much thought to how great writers die, other than knowing a few of their last words as fun facts. But thanks to Roiphe, we now have a few lovely vignettes on how a few writers fascinated with death spent their last days. From Susan Sontag to Sigmund Freud to Maurice Sendak, this book tackles the good, the bad, and the ugly of the greats' final moments. While Roiphe speaks sentimentally and with great attachment about these authors, as if she were eulogizing them to us at times, she *is* really attached because she herself almost died of pneumonia and wondered how the people whose works she was reading had faced down their respective mortal coils and the shuffling off thereof. I really enjoyed this book and while it did verge on a little too sentimental for my tastes, I'm so glad I know more about Maurice Sendak and the way he felt death called to him throughout his whole life, starting with his heart attack in his 30s.