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character considers how they might have remained more connected to each other or helped to avert their loss

Marshal's determined search for John himself, the distraction of a clever, brave woman, and the pain of losing

The family reels from the loss, feeling and casting blame, turning within themselves, and existing in kind heart are the stars of the early chapters of the book, but her older years (in which she seems lost

In her memoir In Love, author Amy Bloom shares the story of an impossible situation: the pending loss Ameche begins showing cognitive loss, and when a diagnosis is established of Alzeimer's disease, he considers I listed other heartbreaking and beautiful memoirs about facing death and loss in the Greedy Reading

Annemarie realizes how essential Annie had been to her own sense of self and how lost she feels without

In the wake of their father's death, each brother reels from the loss in his own way. Along with the brothers' divergent paths forward after loss, their distinct voices--one machine-gun-like

In Hall's Broken Country , characters do their duties, find wondrous love, feel heartbreak, suffer tragedies, sometimes act impulsively, and reel from the consequences of all of the above. A mystery surrounds a deadly moment, and the book ends with a hopeful, imperfect, heartbreaking way forward. Beth and her kind husband Frank live and farm outside the small English village where they grew up. They love each other, but they are able to stay married only because they push down the memories of tragedies that could haunt them, and because secrets from the past stay buried. But when Frank's brother shoots a dog going after the family's sheep, the gunshot sets into motion events that will change everything. The dog belonged to Gabriel Wolfe, Beth's childhood love, and his return to town brings back long-suppressed complications around jealousies, love, choices, and the weighty consequences of the past. I love a farm-life novel, and in Broken Country , Hall creates a background of relentless care, feeding, planting, harvesting, repair, routines, life, and death. Against the straightforward, duty-driven work, Hall sets a complex, twisted set of past affections, heartbreak, vulnerability, and hurt, then offers up faulted, broken, hopeful, impulsive characters who are at times wondrously stoic, and at other times act against their best interests, complicating everything and potentially destroying everything in their wake. Broken Country is a study of an extreme, life-and-death-stakes fallout after heartbreaking tragedy, but it's also a story of young love blossoming, then shriveling under the first pressures of the outside world; it's a mystery in which duty overpowers the difficult truth; and it's a hopeful view of how an imperfect set of characters can find their clumsy, sometimes beautiful, way forward. I read this immersive story in a flash. More books about forbidden love I received a prepublication edition of Broken Country  courtesy of Simon & Schuster and NetGalley. For more books about forbidden love, check out the titles at this link .

Memorial Days  is Geraldine Brooks's memoir of sudden loss, delayed grief, and a delving into sorrow considered settling down--to sit with Tony's journals, dive into her memories, rage against what she's lost journey and in her deliberate way of taking time, to a more peaceful acceptance accompanying her deep loss If you're interested in books about mortality and loss, check out the titles here .

slim novel (160 pages) explores the immediate, visceral experiences of trying to conceive a baby, of losing a baby, and the growing physical and emotional distance from a partner as losses and uncertainty mount

Crosley's memoir traces a treasured friendship and the gutting loss of that dear friend. In Sloane Crosley's memoir Grief Is for People, she explores life after the loss of her closest friend A month before that horrible loss, her New York City apartment is burgled, and at that time, all of her her struggle to understand her friend's reasoning and unknown despair, and her deep, dark sense of loss everchanging, zigzagging route toward trying to find answers, toward trying to craft resolutions to open-ended loss

uncompromising societal expectations who work to connect across secrets, upended traditional roles, shocking loss to contact the dead, and she holds regular seances to help those who are worrying and suffering from loss seemed like indelible relationships fall away as Buckeye  stretches across decades of life, choices, and loss

Oxford Year takes a light, romantic tone and within it, explores weighty issues like serious illness, loss , grief, vulnerability, and offers a suitably complicated ending that doesn't wrap up life's messy loose Her phone is always at hand, and if her bosses call, she drops everything to pick up and be a sounding structure to take on seriously weighty issues like family dynamic struggles, commitment, loyalty, grief and loss

ICYMI: Elizabeth McCracken shares her heartbreaking, gorgeous, terrible story of loss and love surrounding the loss of her baby at nine months in utero and her experience living through grief in this stellar of how to go on after unimaginable loss. After her loss, she yearns for a similar exchange of information in which she owns a stack of cards explaining This is a heartrending memoir about losing a child.

Joella's lovely exploration of three characters' loss and grief allows for deep human connection, the You accept that there will be a hole if you lose them- the same way a painting or a photograph will leave Chuck Ayers is a recent widower and is reeling from the loss of the love of his life. Kirsten Bonato has suffered a loss of her own, which threw off her long-standing plans for vet school

He wrote Hua's eulogy, then began writing what became Stay True in order to cope with his loss, explore

Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss. Loss is not felt in the absence of love.” Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander writes gorgeously about Ficre Ghebreyesus, the husband she lost Alexander shares the trauma surrounding this enormous loss--which occurred days after Ghebreyesus's fiftieth Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life.

up an irresistible rom-com with great banter and with interesting and difficult, complex issues of loss But none of Jo's losses or disappointments or life experiences could have prepared her for the horrific , shocking loss of her young nephew Samson, Beth's youngest child (and Jo's birthday twin), in a biking naturally creeps through, and it's bringing up uncomfortable feelings in Jo--who vividly remembers the loss moving forward, and the heartbreaking reckoning with perceived responsibility for events leading to loss

Elif Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees explores past Turkish-Greek conflicts in a small island community while illustrating the interconnectedness of grief, love, community, and nature in this heartwarming literary fiction story. My friend James and I were recently sharing book recommendations, and he mentioned this author and this book in particular, so I added it to the top of my to-read list. Since her mother Defne went into a coma and never woke up, young loner Ada Kazantzakis has continued to live in London with her distracted botanist father Kostas, who has little brain space for anything but his plants. A fig tree with its own voice and point of view--I loved that there was no explanation, just a plunge into this omniscient, sometimes prickly, often opinionated view--witnessed Kostas's young love with Defne. The fig tree shares the story of the young lovers and while exploring the conflicts between Turkish and Greek characters in the book, also emphasizes the interconnectedness of nature and of humans over the centuries through her ecologically-centered vision of life. Ada is seeking a meaningful link to her past, meanwhile her stranger of an aunt emerges, and with her, the possibility of filling in missing pages of Ada's parents' story--and therefore Ada's own. The fig tree offers the reader much of the material that fills in the blanks: what really occurred between Ada's parents over the years; which factors drove them apart and brought them back together; and the mysteries that swirled around pivotal moments of the past. The ending section is lovely, with heartwarming promise, hope, resolution, and a fig-tree-related revelation that I loved. I listened to The Island of Missing Trees as an audiobook. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Elif Shafak is also the author of There Are Rivers in the Sky, Three Daughters of Eve, The Forty Rules of Love, The Bastard of Istanbul, The Architect's Apprentice, and many other novels.

Nagamatsu's science fiction centers around a resurgence of an ancient Arctic plague. These interconnected stories are odd, fascinating, and sometimes panic-inducing, yet they offer glimmers of hope. I was intrigued by all of it. "It’s strange how the discovery of an ancient girl in Siberia and viruses we’ve never encountered before can both redefine what we know about being human and at the same time threaten our humanity. If I were a philosopher, perhaps I’d have more thoughts on this…. But there is still work to be done. There is still hope." It's 2030, and an archaeologist in the Arctic Circle discovers a body perfectly preserved in the permafrost. His personal situation is complicated by his grief for his recently deceased daughter, and he aims to continue the research work she began. But the young woman he has found may have died of an ancient virus, and thawing the body for study could unleash the long-eradicated illness all over again. The interconnected stories here are made up of strange, affecting situations, including those in which: the virus causes organs to transform into other organs until the host dies; a theme park provides rollercoaster-induced euthanasia to dying children; hotels become elaborately designed spaces used for saying goodbye or for cremation rather than travel stays; and an irresistible, sentient pig commands its own story. In one situation, referred to in the book's title, there is a captivating, dark, in-between world of floating, nebulous memories that highlights humans’ struggles to connect to each other. The space also offers those in it a tantalizing chance to look back on pivotal moments from their life, and some do so with regret or wistfulness, while others focus on the gift of being able to recall forgotten moments. Those in the in-between world are able to see the previously unknown perspectives of those who loved them, and those occupying this space manage to cobble together a surprising sense of community with purpose and passion. In suffering, he said, we found our heart. In suffering, we found new traditions, a way forward. The stories are steeped in death and in coming to terms with mortality while fighting for answers. Yet deep connections are forged--in life-or-death moments throughout the book, and in the collective goal of saving humanity--and in some cases these bonds feel deeper than long marriages. How High We Go in the Dark combines linked elements that wind through the book—a symbol of a planet with three stars repeats through time in ancient artwork, in a tattoo, and in 2037 within the painting Possibility. Characters appear in the backgrounds of others’ stories; a necklace disappears from one story in the Arctic and reappears in a casual mention around the neck of another character across the world in another time; and we see varied points of view regarding aspects of the same stories. As the virus passes like a whirlwind through societies and nations around the globe, Nagamatsu's science fiction work How High We Go in the Dark highlights interpersonal connections spanning centuries--and extending as far as the stars. Do you have have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Nagamatsu is also the author of the short story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone.

The author explores her own wonder, joy, loss, and peace as she reflects on the formidable woman after and fiction allows the true heart of the book, a daughter's wonder, grief, joy, and yearning for her lost

Miriam lost her husband and teenage twins a year ago and, unsurprisingly, since then she hasn't been

Main protagonist Gifty's journey was full of challenges and not too easy or complete, and her voice had me hooked throughout Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom. I listened to Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi's novel about a Ghanaian family living in Alabama. Gifty is working toward her PhD in neuroscience and is focused on studying addiction--an interest and passion inspired by haunting events in her family's past. During the course of the book, Gifty examines the shape of her childhood and young adulthood, including the evangelical church she grew up in and the inspiration and judgment she experienced there; her yearning for her estranged father in Ghana, whom they all call the Chin Chin Man; her brother Nana's athletic obsession, his injury, and his subsequent drug addiction; and her mother's tough love, how she shut down after Nana fell apart, and her current emotional paralysis. Gyasi had me immediately hooked by Gifty. She's had to stifle many of her emotions since she was a young girl--there wasn't space in her family for messy reactions from Gifty or for Gifty to have needs of her own. As an adult, Gifty sinks every waking hour into her pragmatic search for scientific answers that might be illuminating regarding Nana and the breakdown of Gifty's family. The author explores an interesting tension between science and the religion Gifty feels is a part of her. Her childhood preacher and the church community are faulted, yet her experiences within that community are an indelible part of her. Her various traumas have caused her to lock herself off from most other people, and she has long used work as a refuge and an excuse to be almost completely alone. When Gifty's mother comes to visit and falls into a depression, unable to get out of bed or even eat, we see echoes of her past patterns--patterns that panicked Gifty and led to her current, emotionally safer, self-reliant, closed-off lifestyle. It's gratifying to see Gifty shift her thinking and her approach slightly in order to open up just a little bit--and to see how powerful the promise of these small changes can be in various aspects of her life. Gifty is an appealing main protagonist, and Gyasi's journey was fascinating. I couldn't wait to get back to listening to this. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Yaa Gyasi is also the author of Homegoing, which I haven't yet read. If you're interested in immigrant stories, you might want to check out the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Great Stories about the Immigrant Experience.

issues--of what it means to be a family, of secrets and vulnerability, of constricting gender roles, of loss

offers poignancy, an exploration of grief, and the impossible-seeming prospect of going on after deep loss Which means setting Patrick and his beloved (but sometimes foreign-to-him) Maisie and Grant loose in This is especially interesting as related to the two lost loved ones for which Patrick is not officially

curse of social media and of technology in general. 02 A Song for the Road by Kathleen Basi Miriam lost

Is Lost. In Andrew Sean Greer's (Pulitzer-Prize-winning) novel Less, we met the character of Arthur Less as he In book two, Less Is Lost, Arthur faces the death of a former lover as well as a financial crisis--and I wondered if Less Is Lost would rely heavily on the context of the first book, and after reading it, I do take some issue with the elderly descriptions of Less (one example: "Less's [hair], of course, has

Arthur Less is about to turn fifty and is a novelist of limited acclaim. Less is a surprisingly sympathetic character, and as he's using an unusual method to escape attending Andrew Sean Greer offers a story of enduring love, loss, chance encounters, friendship, adventure, and Less is absurd, very funny, and a little heartbreaking--light on the surface but with plenty of meaning Andrew Sean Greer's sequel, Less Is Lost, is scheduled for publication this fall.

How to Lose Your Mother is a poignant, sharp, darkly funny memoir of a challenging, volatile relationship , and, when faced with loss, accepting another person's limitations and facing what feels like the impossible

two are constantly at odds with each other, and each has erected emotional armor around a devastating loss Rebecca Ross has also written two other series, Elements of Cadence and The Queen's Rising, as well as

Through practical research, lengthy reflection, and delving into the grief and the increasing layers of loss

Nikki Erlick explores grief, loss, family conflicts, strangers' bonds, and sticky moral dilemmas related all emotion around the loss--which can cause a different level of loss and another layer of sadness The exploration of loss and grief was a particular highlight for me. (Check out the links below to Bossy reviews of other titles about mortality, grief, and loss.) More Books about Mortality and Loss Erlick is also the author of The Measure .

She's months late delivering the newest installment of the series, and her publisher and fans are losing Libby sets out with her dog on a quest to seek Peanut's wisdom...but she's starting to lose the plot The cover of Libby Lost and Found struck a light-fiction chord for me. Libby Lost and Found holds a tragic illness at its center, with lots of heart and redemption softening Libby Lost and Found is Stephanie Booth's first book.

White Houses , which I gave 5 Bossy stars, the heartbreakingly beautiful In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss professor Zelu has just told off a foolish, privileged, antagonistic student (and then told off her boss The process is controversial and, for some, carries the side effect of losing all emotion around the loss--which can lead to a different level of sadness in itself. One had a rejected application, one is a hopeful participant, one lost a brother after he spent time

as hypothetical looks into Lincoln's frame of mind and motivation as he struggled with his personal losses and feelings of responsibility for the significant loss of life on both sides during the Civil War.

; and I'm listening to Geraldine Brooks's poignant memoir about finding a way to acknowledge the loss 03 Memorial Days: A Memoir by Geraldine Brooks Memorial Days is Geraldine Brooks's memoir of sudden loss remote Australian island to sit with Tony's journals, dive into her memories, rage against what she's lost If you're interested in books about mortality and loss, check out the titles here .

Poet and essayist Ross Gay explores the experiences and explorations that have offered him meaning, depth In poet and essayist Ross Gay's Inciting Joy, he aims to explore the joy in our interactions with each Ross Gay's Book of Delights is a sunshiny set of thoughts and examinations that's not overly earnest

is unflinching in examining her own base impulses and personal challenges such as mental illness and loss away from addressing potentially weighty issues, such as her time in mental health facilities, the loss

Riddle's 450-page multiple-timeline story Lost in Time, a group of scientists have developed a device Ultimately, very little of Lost in Time takes place in this distant past.

Kiran Desai is also the author of The Inheritance of Loss . Kiran Desai is also the author of The Inheritance of Loss .

those responsible--make a Strangers on a Train -type of deal: If you kill the man responsible for my loss attacked in her own home--and the intruder, who has piercing blue eyes but remains unidentified, is on the loose

Through practical research, lengthy reflection, and delving into the grief and the increasing layers of loss

Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley Crosley's memoir traces a treasured friendship and the gutting loss In Sloane Crosley's memoir Grief Is for People , she explores life after the loss of her closest friend A month before that horrible loss, her New York City apartment is burgled, and at that time, all of her her struggle to understand her friend's reasoning and unknown despair, and her deep, dark sense of loss the works and his reactions to them, and searching for and finding peace after a terrible personal loss

weighty issues at its core, Just for the Summer; and I'm listening to Sloane Crosley's memoir about the loss People by Sloane Crosley In Sloane Crosley's memoir Grief Is for People, she explores life after the loss everchanging, zigzagging route toward trying to find answers, toward trying to craft resolutions to open-ended loss

bitter or disappointed with the imperfections of their lives; then the novel examines memory and memory loss Anyway, later Dream State is a meditation on memory and memory loss as related to personhood. a poignant considering of what it all means if one person's memory of these gems and challenges is lost

01 In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom Amy Bloom writes with brutal honesty about her heartbreak In her memoir In Love, author Amy Bloom shares the story of an impossible situation: the pending loss Ameche begins showing cognitive loss, and when a diagnosis is established of Alzheimer's disease, he Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss. Loss is not felt in the absence of love.”

Some people cope with the loss better than others, obviously." Harkin tracks four main characters as they cope with what they may have lost, what might be gained from Others are haunted by what may have been lost, but may imagine far worse scenarios and higher stakes Genova and What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty are two other fiction titles I loved that explore memory loss The Rook is another one with loss of memory at its heart; it's been on my to-read list and my bedside

into the past with present-day events and an unlikely modern-day friendship that comes out of painful loss Louisa, who has just turned eighteen, has had her own significant difficulties and loss, and while she

the past with present-day events and an unlikely modern-day friendship that comes out of a painful loss to contact the dead, and she holds regular seances to help those who are worrying and suffering from loss

novella Eve in Hollywood, Towles imagines the events following Rules of Civility, which ends with Evelyn Ross's But none of Jo's losses or disappointments or life experiences could have prepared her for the horrific , shocking loss of her young nephew Samson, Beth's son and Jo's birthday twin, in a biking accident. through from time to time, and it's bringing up uncomfortable feelings in Jo--who vividly remembers the loss

Ethan Joella's heartwarming story of three interconnected members of a community coping with grief and loss reading Lynn Painter's adorable rom-com about an eccentric high schooler coping with the grief of having lost Dust Bowl. 02 A Quiet Life by Ethan Joella Chuck Ayers is a recent widower and is reeling from the loss Kirsten Bonato has suffered a loss of her own, which threw off her plans for vet school. rom-com Better Than the Movies is about an eccentric high schooler coping with the grief of having lost