A review by recycledwords
Other People's Words by Lissa Soep

emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

4.5

 This book took me a few attempts to get going. I'm not entirely sure what finally made it click but on the fourth attempt I finally made it past the first ten pages and was hooked. Soep reflects on the conversations, both verbal and written, she has had with friends who have passed as well as those they left behind. Intermingled with the vignette-style memories are snippets of conversational theory from the philosopher Bakhtin, which Soep uses to reframe past communications in order to imagine the voices of the dead to continue speaking.

The short chapters reminded me of little notes, as if Soep jotted down memories or ideas as they came to her and then built them out. The chapters are chronological but as it is a reflection on communication in the past there are many references to past conversations, letters etc. Revisiting past communications in such depth as a way of coping with grief was a new idea to me and one that I would like to explore further. This will be a tough read for anyone whose grief is still fairly new, but I would highly recommend it for anyone who is currently in the anticipatory grief stages or who has had some time to process the initial stages of grief and feels ready to explore their relationship to the person they have lost in a new way.

I have deducted one star only because it took me a few attempts to get started.

Thanks to Netgalley, and the publisher for the ARC.