Sorrow's Company: Great Writers on Loss and Grief
In this volume, DeWitt Henry has collected some of the finest contemporary writing about loss and the grieving process, essays that explore emotional trauma in finely crafted prose. Debra Spark recounts her sister's death and reflects on all of the ideas that have helped her come to terms with grief. William Gibson writes eloquently of his mother's passing with a new understanding of the cycles of life. Andre Dubus describes the terrible loss of mobility he suffered in a freak accident, and...
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In this volume, DeWitt Henry has collected some of the finest contemporary writing about loss and the grieving process, essays that explore emotional trauma in finely crafted prose. Debra Spark recounts her sister's death and reflects on all of the ideas that have helped her come to terms with grief. William Gibson writes eloquently of his mother's passing with a new understanding of the cycles of life. Andre Dubus describes the terrible loss of mobility he suffered in a freak accident, and what his pain and disability taught him about the human will. Transported back to her native Antigua and to all the complexities of a difficult childhood, Jamaica Kincaid confronts her brother's ostracism and death from AIDS. All of the pieces reflect, in some aspect, the tenacity, the strength to go forward and to love, that has informed these life journeys andthe resolve that "what matters is not what becomes of us, but what we become." This collection offers a unique perspective on loss, a depth of insight and compassion that only such masterful writers could summon.Patriot Ledger"So this week, I offer not my own words, but those of others who have found a way to solace in sorrow. While I didn't plan to write about the book in this context, it seems to fit the times. The book is "Sorrow's Company: Writers on Loss and Grief" by DeWitt Henry. ....As Henry writes, 'I am grateful to these writers for their eloquence, tenacity, and largeness of heart. This is a book radiant with life.'"
\ Patriot Ledger"So this week, I offer not my own words, but those of others who have found a way to solace in sorrow. While I didn't plan to write about the book in this context, it seems to fit the times. The book is "Sorrow's Company: Writers on Loss and Grief" by DeWitt Henry. ....As Henry writes, 'I am grateful to these writers for their eloquence, tenacity, and largeness of heart. This is a book radiant with life.'"\ \ \ \ \ Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly\ Most books addressing grief tend to be serviceable self-help guides, while more complex and poetic voices emerge in novels or memoirs. This book--which contains essays and memoir excerpts--bridges the gap, offering literary nonfiction in small segments. Henry, founding editor of Ploughshares, has grouped the pieces in sections on leave-taking, loss and legacies. In lively, wrenching snapshots, Debra Spark recalls her family's loving but ultimately inadequate efforts to save her sister from a young death. William Gibson observes the decline of his aged mother in uncompromising detail, describing her momentary helplessness when trying to finish her Christmas card list. Gordon Livingston's pared-down diary winnows the loss of his young son to the emotional bone: "Being his father was the thing I was best at." For Cheryl Strayed, taking heroin after her mother's death "took away every scrap of hurt" inside her. Andre Dubus, himself crippled in an accident, regrets that he had not "lived enough and lost enough" before his father's death to be able to express his love. The Japanese concept of Ukiyo--a floating, shadowy world--inspires James Alan McPherson's essay on his recovery from a coma, as his community of friends provided valuable support and led him to reconnect with the family from which he was estranged. "There is plenty, in all of us, not to love," writes Rebecca McClanahan, paraphrasing her dying surrogate mother. "Yet plenty remains." (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ Library JournalThis anthology proposes a literature of grief. Where others--e.g., Elisabeth K bler-Ross and Norman Cousins--have promoted, alternately, anger and humor to empower the sick, Henry (Ploughshares, New Fiction for the Eighties) advocates writing. Sorting the 15 essays into sections titled "Leave-Takings," "Bereft," and "Legacies," Henry reminds readers of the fragmented nature of modern life, rootless and deprived of the rituals that ease us through such passages as serious illness and death. His anthology examines survivors' responses to death, drawn from their writing. In many of the essays, death or disease is long-distance, and most of the essays are poignant if not tragic. Contributors include Raymond Carver and Andre Dubus (posthumously), William Gibson, Jamaica Kincaid, and lesser-known but no less powerful voices. How the dying and the living face or deny sickness and death may serve as either lesson or template to readers. Henry's introduction and closing recall deaths in his family and reveal how writing has allowed him to face the demeaning and dehumanizing effects of his own cancer. His powerful, unique closing essay offers the voice of the victim anticipating his demise. Recommended for literary collections in all public libraries.--Robert Moore, Itworld.com, MA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ From The CriticsSorrow's Company: Writers On Loss And Grief is an impressive, original anthology of essays and commentaries on the confusion and pain that comes with the death of a friend or loved one. But the fifteen writers who's works are included under the ably editorship of DeWitt Henry translate sorrow into the process of recovery. Spiritual and literary in tone, these assembled works bridge the gulf between the pain of loss and the healing of recovery from loss that makes Sorrow's Company both a tribute to a universal human experience and a source of solace to a bereaved readership. With the contributor essays divided into three main sections (Leave-takings; Bereft; Legacies) Sorrow's Company is a welcome and very highly recommended addition to personal and community library collections and grief counseling reading lists.\ \
