A Widow's Story

I was kicking myself for choosing this book to read over spring break. What was I thinking? Joyce Carol Oates, National Book Award-winning author, suddenly and unexpectedly loses her husband of more than forty years and she falls apart. This book is a memoir of the months she spent after his death trying to use words, the one thing she has always been able to count on, to find a way to live again.




As a person who has studied happiness for many years, Oates did everything wrong. She secluded herself. She obsessed over her loss. She had thoughts of suicide.




Stop here if you don't want spoilers, but read on if you, like me, are always secretly in search of the happy ending. Oates does come out of her depression. It seems to have happened because of some mysterious combination of her reading of her husband's single, never-completed, never-published novel and Oates' decision to begin to work in her husband's garden. Perhaps the writing of this book helped as well. In any case, I read that Oates has married again. Good for her.




*Thank you to Suzanne at Chick With Books for awarding me this book in her Memoir Monday Giveaway.

I started this book in the spring but had to put it down. I am a fan of Joyce Carol Oates and usually enjoy her work. This book spoke to me on many levels, as my mother became a widow in July 2010 and it was a sudden, unexpected event. That is why I had to put this book down and place it on my “To reread in the (near) future” shelf. The pain over the loss of my father came back over me as I read about Ms. Oates' days spent at the hospital and how the world seemed to crash around her when she found out her husband was gone. I plan on returning to this book and finishing it, but right now may not be the right time.