BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • Without Her: A Chronicle of Grief

    (By Rebecca Spiegel)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 27 MB (27,086 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 668 times
    Last checked 14 Hour ago!
    Author Rebecca Spiegel
    “Book Descriptions: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781571311962

    A lucid memoir reckoning with grief and the search for understanding in the wake of a sister’s suicide.

    Rebecca Spiegel is working as a teacher in New Orleans when she learns of her sister Emily’s death by suicide. Shocked, she flies back to Philadelphia. To family. To funeral preparations. To the service. Only after she leaves her parents’ house does the shock give way to grief.

    In the years that follow, Spiegel embarks on a physical, mental, and emotional voyage. She visits Emily’s dorm, digs through her computer. She parses old journal entries and emails. She recalls Emily’s visit to New Orleans mere days before her death, wondering what signs she might have missed. In documenting the last traces of her sister’s life, Spiegel also confronts their parents’ failings, as well as her family’s history of depression, anxiety, OCD, addiction, and disordered eating. She faces her own regrets too. “I wish I had untangled myself from myself,” she writes of her sister’s final visit. “I wish I had been able to see that I was okay and she wasn’t.”

    With each powerful detail resurfaced, Spiegel attempts to put into words what is incomprehensible. She plumbs the depths of her loss in an effort to understand her sister, to uncover logic where it is most elusive. What she finds instead is that there is no narrative on the other side of grief like this. There is no answer, no easy resolution—only those that leave, and those that keep living. Unflinchingly honest, visceral, and raw, this courageous elegy lays bare the hard realities of surviving the loss of a loved one.”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    I'll Come to You

    ★★★★★

    Rebecca Kauffman

    Book 1

    I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying

    ★★★★★

    Youngmi Mayer

    Book 1

    One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman: A Mother's Story

    ★★★★★

    Abi Maxwell

    Book 1

    Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy

    ★★★★★

    Elizabeth Beller

    Book 1

    The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story

    ★★★★★

    Pagan Kennedy

    Book 1

    Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway

    ★★★★★

    Stephanie Duncan Smith

    Book 1

    The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards

    ★★★★★

    Jessica Waite

    Book 1

    Play Boy

    ★★★★★

    Constance Debré

    Book 1

    Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles

    ★★★★★

    Kate Flannery

    Book 1

    Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning

    ★★★★★

    Peter Beinart

    Book 1

    The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying

    ★★★★★

    Nina Riggs

    Book 1

    Journal of a Solitude

    ★★★★★

    May Sarton

    Book 1

    We Came to Welcome You

    ★★★★★

    Vincent Tirado

    Book 1

    Like a Mother

    ★★★★★

    Mina Hardy