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Learn moreBestselling author Anne Roiphe offers a poignant memoir of a journey that no one is prepared for: widowhood. Weaving between heartbreaking memories of her marriage and the pressing needs of her new day-to-day routine, Roiphe constructs an elegant literary pastiche, not of grief but of renewal. She begins her memoir just as the shock of her husbandโs death has begun to wear off and writes her way into the then unknown world of life after love. In beautifully wrought vignettes, Roiphe captures the infinite number of โfirstsโ that lie ahead, from hailing a cab to locking and unlocking the door, to answering responses to a singles ad placed by her daughter.
Anne Roipheย is the bestselling author of fifteen books, including Fruitful, which was a finalist for the 1996 National Book Award. She has written for the New York Times, New York Observer, Vogue, Elle, Redbook, Parents, and the Guardian. Her work has been anthologized in more than ten collections of essays and is represented in more than fifteen college textbooks. She lives in New York City.
Lorna Raver, named one of AudioFile magazineโs Best Voices of the Year, has received numerous Audie Award nominations and many AudioFile Earphones Awards. She has appeared on stage in New York, Los Angeles, and regional theaters around the country. Among her many television credits are NYPD Blue, Judging Amy, Boston Legal, ER, and Star Trek. She starred in director Sam Raimiโs film Drag Me to Hell.
Reviews
“In poignant flashes of everyday moments and memories, Roiphe tells an unflinching and unsentimental story of widowhood’s stupefying disquiet, of surviving love and living on.”
“Lorna Raver captures the tone of one who is bewildered by all that has happened but who is trying to persevere against irreconcilable feelings of loss. Raver preserves the sense of vulnerability and bravado in Roiphe’s attempts to convince herself that she should undertake a new relationship to dull her loneliness. Raver contrasts Roiphe’s sense of fragility at being left alone with her fortitude in moving forward, in hopes of feeling less haunted by her husband’s memory.”
โRadiates with raw emotion and is both painful to read and terrifying to consider...No one can really prepare a woman for this passage in life, but Roipheโs luminous memoir is a beacon of help and, ultimately, hope.โ
“[A] moving memoir.”
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