There has been much discussion lately about an “onslaught” of grief memoirs. Perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t see how 5 books, (including new works by Joyce Carol Oates, Meghan O’Rourke, and Francisco Goldman), in the course of the past 3 years qualifies as a blitz. Especially when the topic of these memoirs—death and grief—is the most universal of human experiences.
And yet, up until 2005, when Joan Didion published The Year of Magical Thinking, there were hardly any truly insightful books on the subject, something Didion discovered when she turned to reading for solace in the wake of her husband’s death. As did I. A reader and writer my whole life, I’ve always looked to books to make sense of the incomprehensible. After my husband died in the World Trade Center on September 11th, I searched for a novel or a memoir that captured the cataclysmic horror and bizarre events of grief, the details both great and small: Did other people in mourning suffer memory loss so great they’d walk out of the house without shoes? Was I the only person who found that alongside the unfathomable lows there were also depths of feeling I never could’ve appreciated before? Surely other writers, overcome by this most profound and utterly unexpected experience, had written about it in one form or another. But the only book I could find, with the exception of a couple of marginally useful self-help titles, was C.S Lewis’ A Grief Observed. An honest and beautiful portrayal of a widower’s grief, yes, but surely there are other perspectives out there? Other truths to be gleaned?
So how is it that 5 grief memoirs in three years get talked up as an abundance when at least 22 memoirs about addiction have been published in the same time span? Not to mention there have been at least 10 books featuring dogs released in the past year alone. Why is there greater interest (or perceived greater interest, I’ll get to that in a minute) in heroin addiction and daily life from a pit bull’s point of view than there is in our own mortality?
In one recent essay in the website The Millions discussing this rush of grief books, (amongst them an intelligent examination of a daughter’s grief after her mother loses her battle with cancer, a widower’s complex love letter after a freak accident kills his young wife, and a widow’s recounting of her experiences leading up to and after the death of her husband of over 47 years), the writer Bill Morris poses the question: Why are readers drawn to other people’s suffering? I wonder, why wouldn’t they be?
According to the majority of book editors, they’re not. I deduct this from the experience I’ve been having in trying to sell my novel, which tells the story of a young September 11th widow who discovers a secret involving her late husband and some of their closest friends. While the story is fiction, it is driven by emotional truth–namely, the emotional truth of grief and mourning–and this is the aspect of the novel that most editors have expressed concern with.
One of the editors who passed on my novel wrote: “I had very mixed feelings about this novel—I thought it was beautifully written and touching without being maudlin, but I’m sorry to say that I simply found it too upsetting to read. I couldn’t see myself reading it over and over again throughout the editing process, or presenting it to my sales force without crying, to be honest. The emotional impact, in this case, worked against it for me—which I know must sound ridiculous, but although AFTER [my book] came close to overcoming my general reluctance to work on stories prominently featuring 9/11, I still just don’t feel quite emotionally ready to plunge in wholeheartedly and give this novel the publishing support it deserves.”
It’s not that I can’t handle rejection. As a writer, I’m unfortunately way too comfortable with it. The handful of editors who said they passed on my novel because they took issue with the story, or the characters, or simply didn’t like it, I wanted to send flowers to. These were rejections I could understand. But the majority said they were passing because the book is too sad. I just don’t know what to do with that. Isn’t this why many of us read in the first place? To feel? To try and make sense of the world, even the dark parts? According to much of the publishing world, no. More than one editor remarked that in “this climate” people want to read upbeat books. 9/11 stories? No way. “They don’t sell well.”
If the publishers are right and it is true that the reason that up until recently there have been few grief memoirs published is few people want to read them, we shouldn’t be surprised. A lack of interest in books about mourning and grief would perfectly mirror this country’s inability to discuss and cope with death, and to comfort and soothe those that are struck by loss.
Ask anyone in mourning and they will tell you how alone and isolated they feel. They will have countless stories about inane and insensitive remarks, or other peoples’ avoidance of them altogether – the death cooties. Too often, people in mourning are made to feel like they must worry about appearing too sad so as to make others uncomfortable. You always need to be pressing on, firmly in one of the designated grief stages. And if you haven’t “gotten over it” in a year, well, what’s wrong with you? 
When I was deep in the throes of grief, I often thought of the time my late husband Blake and I were strolling through Kyoto gardens on our honeymoon. Our Japanese tour guide pointed out some Shinto shrines, which led her to explain the various ways the Japanese honor the dead in their everyday lives, long after their loved ones have passed. “In America, what do you do?” she asked. Neither Blake or I could think of anything beyond the funeral. And to be honest, as young and naive as I was, I didn’t see how ritual tributes to those who have passed would necessarily be useful or desirable.
Just a year later, walloped by Blake’s death, I found myself wishing we had accepted public mechanisms in which to mourn and remember our loved ones. As a young widow, this felt particularly important. If I spoke about Blake too much, people would start to look at me funny, as if I wasn’t “moving on.” But I needed to be able to move on and remember Blake at the same time. Ten years later I’ve found ways to do this, but in the first few years following Blake’s death balancing these needs was one of my greatest challenges, largely due to the way our culture likes to push grief and mourning neatly out of sight. As a result, the mere mention of someone who has died, in even a casual way, can send people running to the next room. Or cause an acquaintance to fumble out an awkward comment like, “9/11. Yeah. That was a crappy day for everyone.”
So, the obvious answer might be that the reason there are so few books on grief is because we, as a country, don’t want to read about it. Talk about it. Even think about it, really. Except that Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking spent weeks on the bestseller list. Joyce Carol Oates’ A Widow’s Story and Francisco Goldman’s Say Her Name were both featured prominently on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. Meghan O’Rourke’s The Long Goodbye is one of the most buzzed about books of the season.
I don’t know if 5 grief memoirs means we should make way for a new genre, but I do hope these books open up a discussion about grief and mourning, love and loss, resilience and renewal. And pave the way for other books that revolve around death to get published. Because I like breezy-light books as much as the next person, but there’s only so much I can read about Labrador Retrievers.
26 responses
Hi Raina. It’s an “onslaught” because in the world of trends, all you need are three people doing the same thing at the same time. See any New York Times Style section. In all seriousness, though, I have loved the few truly grief-filled books that I’ve read (A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry comes to mind.) But would I have picked up that book if I’d known in advance how sad and angry it would make me feel? I’m not sure. But I am grateful that I read it.
–jen
@propjen
Minor quibble: Goldman’s work, though certainly “memoir-like” (and a selection of Say Her Name did appear in the New Yorker billed as a personal history) is a novel.
Couldn’t agree more! I have read only two (Didion and Oates) of those mentioned, but was grateful for the depth, insight, and downright nourishing comfort they provided. We shy away from death, and it is essential for emotional health to oppose that aversion, our best writers help us do that.
@Ms, thanks for the comment! @Jennifer, you make a good point, and I don’t think you’re alone in your viewpoint. I’m sure this is one of the reasons people are confused as how to market “sad” books. Which is a shame, because so many of them are so gratifying to read. @Guy – thanks for the correction. I should have been clear that Goldman’s book has been categorized as an “autobiographical novel,” not a memoir. I think my general point applies to novels as well as memoirs, though.
I think Jennifer has it right about knowing in advance that a book is going to break your heart – I read and LOVED The Long Goodbye, but if I’d known how bitterly sad it was going to make me, I don’t know that I would have picked it up. I tell people that while I do recommend it, I have a hard time telling them they SHOULD read it because of the emotional toll it takes.
I’m very interested in connecting to people who survived or are survivors of WTC. I am one of the few literary writers who is also a Wall Street veteran who published anything in the wake of the attacks. I tried to get a literary journal to publish my best friend’s memoir of escaping the WTC that day — but they rejected it on the grounds that it wasn’t “anti-corporate” enough.
So the story has been taken away from those who experienced it — and the well-published books and anthologies are by people with a poor understanding of the event. I would love to read your novel based on your life and loss — so would lots of people.
Love to get in touch, contact me through my web site http://www.ChristinaGombar.com.
Where you can also see my prize-winning epic poem (really!)about my life at AIG. Best wishes.
Please, I want to read your book.
While I have never experienced a grief as deep as yours (losing someone that close), I have still experienced the deep pit that sadness can leave you in. And the only thing that got me out of that sadness was to realize that other people have experienced a grief as deep and endless as mine — and still lived to tell the tale. In the end, we just want to know we’re going to be okay. Even if we’re experiencing the ends of our worlds.
If you need a beta reader, seriously — I want to read your book.
“Too often, people in mourning are made to feel like they must worry about appearing too sad so as to make others uncomfortable.” Truer words were never typed. At most companies you get a minimum of six weeks off after you have a baby but maybe as few as three days off for the death of a first-degree relative. Our societal attitude reflects our fear of death, our secret thought that, if we do everything just right, vitamins, not-smoking, exercise, that SURELY it won’t happen to us. Or those we love.
I thought you’d be interested in this too. A wonderful writer who is losing her baby to Tay Sachs. She proposes a Mourning Day. http://ourlittleseal.wordpress.com/
Sad may not sell but it is NECESSARY. Try the indies if you haven’t already and good luck.
Death cooties. I love that. I wrote my master’s thesis on people who work with death in their professions and I’m now turning it into a memoir of that time. So, not only am I writing about an unpopular topic, I’d doing it in an unpopular genre. Yay me!
Anyway, I have not had a significant loss in my 40 years of life and I’m ashamed to admit that I was one of those people who would avoid those that were grieving. I didn’t know what to say and I felt that whatever I bumbled on about would only add to the person’s heartache. How wrong I was. Death is not contagious and there is no right or wrong way to grieve. I wholeheartedly believe that we read either to escape or to find a piece of ourselves in the pages of a well written book. It’s about connection. So I’m all for the grief memoir because I know the next decade or so, I’m going to need comfort from someone else’s perspective to feel less alone.
Have you read Thomas Lynch? He’s a poet/funeral director and his book “The Undertaking: Life Stories from the Dismal Trade” is wonderful.
Thanks for the great post!
I wonder why we read and honor books about depression (The Noonday Demon,Darkness Visible, An Unquiet Mind, etc.) as opposed to actual grief.
This is bittersweet. Necessary. I’m getting the feeling that an author prepares a memoir, based not
on the market, what is selling, but on the acknowledgement that “It is time. I think I’m ready.” Good.
We certainly don’t need more reminders of the clear and present loveliness around us. There
are more than enough examples of beauty, even when the compression of grief mutes our
senses, causes us to fold in on ourselves, squeeze out sound.
I am compelled to read about your grief, how you came to be under water,
what Djinn you encountered there. I want to experience your tremors, to walk with
you into the shades, find what courage you found, because maybe I will find, reflected
within myself somewhere, the courage to approach my own grief, the compassion to
be available when your grief is more silent and critical than mine.
Sad may not sell, but do we really need another commodity in sadness? You make room here
for the second highest order of business in the universe to surface. Vulnerability.
Mercy, as you already know, comes first.
My blessings, for your compelling perspective, Raina.
Tell potential publishers — I would LOVE to read your book.
Wow. Thank you for all the generous comments. I will definitely check out some of the writers and links you all suggest. For those of you who said they’d love to read my book – and thank you! – I plan to have a website up soon with, amongst other goodies, an excerpt. If you friend me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter I can alert you when it’s up.
@cwebb: who’s to say that the grief people deal with during depression isn’t “actual”? it seems weird — and misinformed — to assign emotions authenticity.
This piece is gorgeous, timely, and so right. Thank you for writing it. Would also add Elizabeth McCracken’s “An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination” to the conversation, was published in 2008, and adds a different, important voice to the conversation.
“No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear’ ‘A Grief Observed’ C.S Lewis
“In a certain way, though, I know how my colleague feels. Not that everything ‘went black,’ nothing of the sort; only that the event itself is cloudy because of some primitive, numbing effect that obscured it at the time; the same effect, I suppose, that enables panicked mothers to swim icy rivers, or rush into burning houses, for a child; the effect that occasionally allows a deeply bereaved person to make it through a funeral without a single tear. Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things- naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror- are too terrible to really ever grasp at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory, that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself- quite to one’s surprise- in an entirely different world.” The Secret History, Donna Tartt.
Of all that I read after my partner died of pancreatic cancer in 2008, ‘A Grief Observed’ and ‘The Secret History’ were the most comfort. Some people turn to alcohol or drugs, I did books. Lots and lots of books. I did books about cancer, dying and death. I read as much as I could and when I came out of a memoir induced coma, I learned the invaluable lesson that life goes on, ‘Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. . . but life finds a way.’
I’d day hand on heart that without a voracious appetite for books about all aspects of the death spectrum and Jurassic Park I would not be here today.
I would add that there’s an entire sub-genre of environmental literature that deals with grief, in the context of landscape: The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Erlich, Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon (divorce, in this case, rather than death). Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams was a major crowd-pleaser.
As far as the comments you got, well, they’re dispiriting and quite stupid. I contend that as long as publishers recruit from eastern elite girls’ schools and don’t have a mechanism for bringing in mid-career people from other fields (journalism, tech, international development, education and whatever else) you’ll get way too many of these tea party debutante kinds of rejections.
Lois, The Secret History is one of my favorite books. That one I read before my husband died, but it has always stuck with me. And I can relate to the grief-induced book addiction.
Strikes a chord — although my first novel Place Last Seen did eventually get picked up by Picador, everyone else passed saying it was “beautifully written but too dark” — and where I thought it would strike a chord with readers groups (mistakenly thinking that other people, like me, like to take imaginative dry runs through the worst thing they can think of, you know, just in case), well, it didn’t. When my younger brother/roommate/most beloved person was killed several years later in a car crash, I actually said during the funerals “But I thought I’d written my book about grief.” I wrote two drafts of a memoir, one of them fictional, but I couldn’t come up with anything more compelling than “my brother died and I was sad.” Which seemed inane. I did finally wind up with a short story, that I really liked, and got that published but even then, I felt sort of bad — kept telling my friends “oh you don’t have to read it. It’s too sad. You were there.” When Patrick died, my manager at work, whose first husband had dropped dead of a heart attack when their daughter was 2, called me up and said “welcome to the club no one wants to be in,” and I think you’re right. Death cooties. People want to think it won’t happen to them. It can’t happen to them. Although it sucks to be in “the club” I have discovered over time that there are more of us than one would think (or perhaps I just have a group of friends with very high familial mortality rates!).
lois, pretty powerful to see that Secret History passage pulled out, actually. thanks for posting.
raina,xo
Thank you for this wonderful peice. I have bought Meghan O’Rourke’s book from the US as it is not out here in the UK until August and I couldn’t wait that long! I write about books about grief in amongst all the others and interestingly they garner the fewest comments.. but loss & bereavement are my day job and I know how valuable these books are. On that note you may be interested to know about a book published here this week Held By the Sea by Jane Darke . A beautiful memoir about the death of Jane’s Cornish filmmaker & playwright husband Nick. I write about a book about handbags and get 50 comments, 1000 + hits, Jane’s book this week just three comments, but I know just as many people will have read the post. Sometimes online as in life people perhaps don’t have the words or the narrative for all the reasons you mention, we need books like this to supply them.I too would very much like to read your book, please would you let me know if this becomes possible ??
But in this experience we call living, who the hell is short on grief? Not me, that’s for sure. It pains me, but it’s my duty, to deal with my own grief and that of those I care for, but to go out of my way to make myself even more depressed seems about two steps away from breaking out the straight razor and calling it a day. ‘The Chronology of Water’ has to be the consummate example of grief memoirs, beginning with the moment the author first held her stillborn baby. It’s obviously a matter of taste, and yeah, it sells like hot-cakes. Unfortunately for me and readers with tastes like my own, this cycle does little for us, and I can’t wait until bookstores are full of absurd comedic stories again, so the people who like these grief memoirs can take my spot now and start complaining about the part of this never ending cycle that leaves them feeling as if their tastes are a rarity.
Great column!
“Ask anyone in mourning and they will tell you how alone and isolated they feel.”
Unless of course they’re the kind of people who need to be alone and isolated to let their feelings out.
“Ask anyone in mourning and they will tell you how alone and isolated they feel. They will have countless stories about inane and insensitive remarks, or other peoples’ avoidance of them altogether – the death cooties. Too often, people in mourning are made to feel like they must worry about appearing too sad so as to make others uncomfortable. You always need to be pressing on, firmly in one of the designated grief stages. And if you haven’t “gotten over it†in a year, well, what’s wrong with you?”
Ain’t that the truth. Great essay, although I sincerely hope that these books are more in the spirit of shedding light on an uncomfortable topic in our society, rather than being a new subgenre in Misery Porn. If I could add another title to the list, but besides “A Grief Observed,” Mark Everett (aka E, the Eels) “Things the Grandchildren Should Know” really helped get me through my own personal experiences with death and grief. The lesson behind these titles probably isn’t that Sad Sells (although I’d hope it would help those are grieving find some comfort and hope), but that sometimes the best way to work through these difficult experiences and emotions is to produce something. Certainly if you read Everett’s book or are familiar with his music, he’s said that much of his earlier work has been inspired by/was a way of working through being the last surviving person in his immediate family.
Thank you for writing this. I recently lost my husband, and feel his story pushing out of me, but have been afraid to write it for several reasons, one being my fear that people won’t be “interested.” How can you not be interested in the human experience? Regardless, the goal is to tell his story, to get it out, not necessarily to reach an audience, but I have struggled with these thoughts. Thanks for putting down yours so eloquently.
Hello Raina,
I stumbled upon this website and your essay this morning, and feel compelled to respond. I am a clinical social worker, and author of three novels, including “Saving Elijah” (Putnam 2000), which was inspired by the loss of my three-year-old son, Michael. That novel, into which I poured my whole being, got extraordinary reviews, but sold poorly. I’ll never forget the time I was about to give a bookstore reading, and a woman came up and asked what my book was about. I told her and she said, “Oh, no. I can’t go there,” and backed up like a car in reverse, you could almost hear the tires screech. With a few exceptions, books about grief that don’t whitewash or shrink-wrap it, don’t sell. On the other hand, after my son died, I spent three years in bed and I still maintain that the process of writing that book saved my life, even if publishing it often felt re-traumatizing. In the end, we write to help us make sense of this life, to make order out of disorder. If we don’t tell the truth, no matter how sad, what’s the point?
The best definition of compassion I’ve ever heard is a Buddhist one: “Compassion is willingness to be close to suffering.†The awkward comment someone made (“9/11. Yeah. That was a crappy day for everyone) fits into several of my five categories of painful and misguided responses to grief. Misguided because the responses aren’t about your loss, they’re about the responder’s attempt to ward off the possibility of being close to your suffering. Painful because they de-legitimize what you’re feeling.
1. Babblers (Let’s talk about anything–anything else.)
2. Advice givers (Take a pill. Have another kid. Start dating again. It’s time to move on.)
3. Pain-minimizers (God must have wanted him. He’s in a better place. You did everything you could.)
4. Lesson-learners (Everything happens for a reason; Time heals all wounds; God never gives us more than we can bear.)
5. Pseudo-empathizers (I know just how you feel, my Uncle Manny died last month.)
God never gives us more than we can bear? Is that so?
By the way, there ARE public forums where people can express their grief. For example, there’s “Open to Hope,” set up by mother and daughter psychologists after the loss of a son/brother. But of course we as writers want “literary” recognition too. Here I am, at it again, working on little memoir in essays that I hope is funny, devastating, poignant, and even (God forbid) inspirational. It’s called, “How I Lost My Bellybutton, and other Naked Survival Stories.” I’m being told, so far, that there are too many memoirs out there. In the immortal words of my grandma: Oy!
Raina, I wish you peace and healing, personal fulfillment, literary recognition, AND a bestseller. All best, Fran Dorf
http://www.frandorf.com (THE BRUISED MUSE)
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.