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The Long Goodbye

by Meghan O'Rourke
Riverhead: Penguin Group (USA). Apr. 2011. 320p. ISBN 9781594487989. $25.95. MEMOIR
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While not the first memoirist to address caring for a terminally ill relative, O'Rourke takes a different tack in recounting her mother's battle with cancer, squaring off with our culture's attitude toward grief. A poet and culture critic for Slate, O'Rourke walks readers through her mother's diagnosis, treatment, and death, revealing the impact each stage had on family members as they individually and collectively struggle to move on. O'Rourke finds that American culture is too quick to push grief away; she searches for depth of understanding elsewhere.What I'm Telling My Friends One of the few memoirs I've read that keeps me chewing over an issue, with painful, charged, and meaningful descriptions of bereavement. This touched many nerves and deserves to be read. — "Memoir Short Takes" Booksmack! 3/3/11
Stunned by the strength of her reaction when her mother died at age 55, award-winning poet and culture critic O'Rourke began keeping a record of her slow passage through grief, which she eventually shared with readers. Her nine-part series got huge response and even sparked comparisons to Joan Didion's . That's a good recommendation.
Stunned by the strength of her reaction when her mother died at age 55, award-winning poet and Slate culture critic O'Rourke began keeping a record of her slow passage through grief, which she eventually shared with Slate readers. Her nine-part series got huge response and even sparked comparisons to Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. That's a good recommendation.
Reviewed by Barbara Hoffert , Mar 03, 2011
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