The Long Goodbye
A Memoir
Published on 25. August 2011
288 pages
978-0-7481-3061-0 (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 * Meghan O'Rourke has written a beautiful memoir about her 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 o * 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 Arrangements *More details
Edition
Digital original
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Edition type
Digital original
File size
0,55 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-7481-3061-0 (9780748130610)
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
Book
04/2012
Virago Press Ltd
€16.50
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
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.
