"The Long Goodbye" by Meghan O'Rourke

The Long Goodbye is a stirring memoir that recounts the grief one feels after the death of a mother. O’Rourke’s first-person voice communicates feelings of anguish that jump off the page, and her poetic writing style beautifully captures the enduring power of love and the overwhelming surge of emotions that surround the death of a loved one. Because her writing seems both refreshingly personal and wholly universal, I found myself wanting to audibly agree with her and underline several particularly good passages. The book belongs to the library, though, so I refrained.

The Long Goodbye is also about O’Rourke’s realization that the history and rituals of grief were still a mystery to her, even as she was experiencing her own grief. Therefore, she spent a lot of time reading scientific studies, novels, and poetry about bereavement in order to write The Long Goodbye. Her writing reflects that this act of seeking knowledge was in itself therapeutic. However, she ultimately discovers that there are very few accepted rituals that Americans still possess to communicate grief. For instance, we no longer dress entirely in black for months, and it’s certainly not acceptable to wail in public or be entirely truthful in our display of grief. Instead, suffering is sequestered. This is unsettling, and it left me with a lot to digest after finishing the book. Highly recommended.

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Book review by Rebecca.