Memorial Days
by
96/99
Critics' Rating Index
78/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
96/99
Volume of Reviews
98/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
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About This Book
A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey to peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse.Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha's Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert's Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied ways those of other cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia's First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.
Reviews
"Reflecting on mourning rituals in various traditions, while chronicling the dramatic, lonesome, and restorative beauty and spirit of the island, Brooks, with arresting precision, sensitivity, and candor, takes deep soundings of her grief and evolving perceptions and feelings in a generous and resonant remembrance."
"In significant ways, it's more useful and inspiring than some of the others."
"Geraldine Brooks charts her journey through an immersion in mourning, from shock to acceptance and the new embrace of life."
"Brooks captures the striking coincidences that marked his death with a poignancy tempered by her keen ability as a storyteller ..."
"A graceful and moving meditation on bereavement."
"...she vividly evokes a place she comes to consider almost sacred, with its massive, vertical cliffs and wide, white sand beaches surrounded by stunning flora and curious creatures."
"Masterfully reveals Brooks as both reporter and fiction writer, marshaling facts and details while probing the ever-motivating miracles of love and loss."
"Brooks valiantly demonstrates, it will sustain you even as you endure."
"A rich account of marriage and mourning, too literary to be considered a self-help book, Memorial Days nonetheless contains much compassionate advice for those who have, or will, suffer the same ferocious blow."
"If anything, it's a little overlean and eked-out, 200-odd pages aired by paragraph breaks."
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