by Ann E Beman (Kernville, CA): People of the Book is an all-time favorite novel, and I love Horse as well. But now Australian author Geraldine Brooks has written the most compelling memoir about grief I’ve yet read. Yes, of course it’s sad, achingly so at times. But for the most part, I found myself feeling hope and appreciation for her departed husband, the writer Tony Horwitz. Brooks found the ideal form with which to frame her memoir, and to give space to her grief. The memoir is told in dual book-of-days timelines, one that excavates from the moment she learns of Horwitz’s death on Memorial Day 2019. This alternates with her day-by-day account of the time she spent three years later holed-up in a shack on Australia’s remote Flinder’s Island. This is the space and time she devoted to mourning. It’s beautifully intimate and candid and also informative about various cultural grief rituals. It’s also a call for the US medical-forensic establishment to rethink their shitty practices. It’s well done, and I hope writing it helped Brooks. I imagine it will help others.
