
The Long Goodbye
A Memoir
Meghan O'Rourke(Author)
Virago Press Ltd
Published on 5. April 2012
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-1-84408-677-1 (ISBN)
Description
Meghan O'Rourke was thirty-two when her mother died of cancer on Christmas Day, 2008. As a writer, even in the depths of her grief, she was fascinated by what she observed of herself in the aftermath: the rage she felt, not only at what had happened to her mother, but also at the inability of people to acknowledge her pain; her sense that the meaning of her life had changed fundamentally with the loss of a parent; the way that the reassuringly familiar often became somehow completely new and strange. The Long Goodbye interleaves personal recollections of her much-loved mother with an examination of what it means to grieve in a society which no longer has the rituals - or even, most of the time, the desire - to engage with grief, to understand it, and to let it do both its worst - and its best.
Reviews / Votes
Emotionally acute, strikingly empathetic, thorough and unstinting intellectually, and of course elegantly wrought. But it's above all a useful book, for life -- the good bits and the sad ones, too. Richard Ford 'A beautiful memoir about ...loss of a truly irreplaceable mother--yes, it is sad, it is in fact heartrending, but it is many things more: courageous, inspiring, wonderfully intelligent and informed, and an intimate portrait of an American family as well Joyce Carol Oates In her blazingly honest, relentlessly brave memoir Meghan O'Rourke takes on the strange, impossible time after a parent's death. I couldn't recommend this elegant and fearless book more highly to anyone who has, or has had, a mother. Katie Roiphe, author of Uncommon ArrangementsMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 202 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
253 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84408-677-1 (9781844086771)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Previous edition
Book
08/2011
Virago Press Ltd
€38.56
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Person
Meghan O'Rourke was born in 1976 and lives in New York with her husband. She is a frequent contributor to Slate, a founding editor of Double X, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. She has published one volume of poetry.