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A Widow's Story: A Memoir

3.65 of 5 stars 3.65 · rating details · 1,441 ratings · 364 reviews

In a work unlike anything she's written before, National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates unveils a poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of her husband of forty-six years and its wrenching, surprising aftermath.

"My husband died, my life collapsed."

On a February morning in 2008, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the emergency r...more

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Published February 15th 2011 by HarperAudio (first published 2011)

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Nov 22, 2010 Clay added it · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-non-fiction

I requested a galley of Joyce Carol Oates' "A Widow's Story, a Memoir", because, as an author who was also some years ago widowed, I thought it might speak to me, and it certainly has, in more ways than I could ever have imagined.

There are a lot of grief books, a number written by widows, but none tells the raw truth of grief and loss like this one, how close to insanity grief feels--is, perhaps--and for a very long time too; how savage, precarious, shattering and lazy grief is, until, at some a...more

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Mar 31, 2011 Melinda rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, not-worth-owning

Joyce Carol Oates ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Ca... ) wrote this book after the sudden and unexpected death of her husband, Raymond Smith in 2008 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_... ). They had been married 47 years, she was 70 and he was 78. As other writers that I have read, the author uses her writing as a way to deal with the shock of death. She writes very skillfully and with great mastery. If you have ever known a widow, then you will recognize the crushing grief combined w...more

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Jan 31, 2012 Charles Bechtel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Read in one sitting. I was struck more as a writer than as a widower, something I daily dread becoming, by this idea: a primary repetitive act of any novelist is to invent, word by word, sentence by sentence. Failing the power to invent, a novelist may turn to what she can recall and massage that until she has what will stand in for what she wanted invented. One of the most striking characteristics of Ms. Oates work is that she invents so often, so well, and so clearly. Looking over how much she...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Crystal rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

I’ve looked for a way to justify giving this book 2 stars. For the most part, I did not like it but there are redeeming parts of this narrative. I’m mainly a non-fiction reader and I enjoyed memoirs of people who are NOT famous. I’ve never read any of Joyce Carol Oates fiction and it seems by so many reviews that I should, so I instead started with this book. It began well. But I feel it could have been cut in half. So there much redundancy and while it is her person experience, I did feel that...more

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Jun 10, 2012 Jenny Brown rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I could not finish this book. It's another of those books written by someone anointed by the literary establishment who appears to have no sense of humor, no empathy, and no sense of how spoiled and conceited they sound. Oates recounts her husband's unexpected death in a tone that pushes the reader away when they would most like to connect.

One of the perils of being a darling of the literary establishment appears to be that there are vultures there eager to profit from every word that drips off...more

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Jun 16, 2013 Buchdoktor rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: aging-altern, biography, krankheit-sterben, literaturwissenschaft

Joyce Carol Oates war fast 50 Jahre lang mit Ray Smith (*1930) verheiratet, der mit ihr gemeinsam die renommierte Literaturzeitschrift "Ontario Review" herausgab. Das Paar war selten länger als einen Tag voneinander getrennt. 2008 verstarb Ray Smith überraschend nach einer Sekundärinfektion, die er sich im Krankenhaus zugezogen hatte. Wer schon einmal mit einem plötzlichen Todesfall konfrontiert wurde, kennt die Selbstvorwürfe, die Oates in wiederkehrenden Zyklen plagen. Immer wieder durchlebt s...more Joyce Carol Oates war fast 50 Jahre lang mit Ray Smith (*1930) verheiratet, der mit ihr gemeinsam die renommierte Literaturzeitschrift "Ontario Review" herausgab. Das Paar war selten länger als einen Tag voneinander getrennt. 2008 verstarb Ray Smith überraschend nach einer Sekundärinfektion, die er sich im Krankenhaus zugezogen hatte. Wer schon einmal mit einem plötzlichen Todesfall konfrontiert wurde, kennt die Selbstvorwürfe, die Oates in wiederkehrenden Zyklen plagen. Immer wieder durchlebt sie in Gedanken die letzten Stunden, bevor sie ihren Mann mit einer schweren Lungenentzündung in die Notaufnahme des Krankenhauses brachte. Er hatte eigentlich keine Zeit krank zu sein, Termine drängten und Ray Smith war überzeugt davon, in wenigen Tagen wieder als Herausgeber arbeiten zu können. Was wäre, wenn ich meinen Mann in ein anderes Krankenhaus gefahren hätte oder wenn in der Nacht seines Todes nicht nur Assistenzärzte Dienst gehabt hätten; warum konnte ich den Tod, den ich als sinnlos emfpinde, nicht verhindern? Oates Selbstzweifel reichen noch tiefer; denn nur ein Jahr zuvor überlebte das Paar mit viel Glück einen Autounfall. Du hast kein Recht zu trauern, du hättest bei dem Unfall sterben können, wirft sich die Witwe nun vor. Auch in der Anspannung, die unmittelbar auf die Todesnachricht folgt, dem äußerlichen Funktionieren und automatischen Erledigen in diesem Moment sinnloser Hausarbeiten, werden sich viele Betroffene wiedererkennen können. Das leere Zuhause ist plötzlich kein Zuhause mehr und sogar die Katzen reagieren verstört. Gerade noch Mrs. Smith, nun plötzlich die Witwe, realisiert Oates, dass ihr Ehemann Ray der Hüter von Haus und Garten war und das Paar alle Entscheidungen stets gemeinsam traf. Ohne Ray wird nun alles zusammenbrechen. Nachlass- und Erbschaftsangelegenheiten sind zu erledigen. Der nötige Behördenmarathon konfrontiert die frisch verwitwete Autorin damit, dass für andere Menschen der Tod Routine ist.

Oates und Smith waren sich als Paar und in ihrer Leidenschaft für die Literatur innig verbunden. Da Ray Smith die Bücher seiner Frau und die Kritiken anderer darüber meist nicht las, bewahrte sich in dieser Autoren-Beziehung jeder einen abgeschiedenen persönlichen Bereich, zu dem der Partner keinen Zugang hatte. Ray Smith hinterließ ein unvollendetes Romanmanuskript, das er zugunsten seiner Lektorentätigkeit aufgab. Seine Witwe fragt sich nun, ob sie wissen möchte, was sie bisher nicht über ihn wusste? In ihren Erinnerungen bewegt sie sich weit zurück in die Zeit als Ray und sie sich kennlernten. Ständig treffen für den Herausgeber Ray Smith weiter Manuskripte zur Veröffentlichung oder zur Begutachtung ein; plötzlich sind Texte, die vorher Smiths ganzes Leben ausmachten, nur noch Dinge. Mit der Erkenntnis, dass die Zeitschrift eingestellt werden muss, endet eine Ära. Schließlich wird aus der frisch verwitweten Mrs. Smith erneut Joyce Carol Oates, die ihre Lehrtätigkeit wieder aufnimmt und während ihrer Vorlesungen für kurze Zeit ihre Verzweiflung ablegt. Schlaflosikgiet, Selbstmordgedanken, Medikamentenmissbrauch wechseln ab mit dem Wunsch, den sich sorgenden Freunden keine Last sein zu wollen.

Joyce Carol Oates unternimmt in ihren Erinnerungen an Ray Smith eine Pilgerreise. Tiefe Verzweiflung wechseln ab mit Phasen des Galgenhumors gegenüber den Widrigkeiten des Alltags und mit tiefer Dankbarkeit für die außergewöhnliche Partnerschaft. Die Autorin beschreibt, stellenweise scharfzüngig, die eigene Verwandlung zur verwitweten Mrs Smith und wieder zurück. Oates protokolliert ihre Gedanken und Gefühle akribisch; die äußere Form des Texts aus kurzen Szenen, Gedankensplittern und Auszügen aus ihrer Korrespondenz spiegelt ihre innere Situation wider. Kursiv gesetzte Kommentare über "die Witwe" deuten den bevorstehenden Ausgang der Ereignisse an. Schließlich tauchen diese Kommentare nicht nur am Ende der Kapitel sondern auch direkt im Text auf. So taktvoll Oates sich über ihren Mann äußert, überschreitet ihr persönlicher für die Nachwelt festgehaltener Trauerprozess in seiner Ausführlichkeit doch Grenzen. Nicht jeder Leser, der sich für biografische Details aus dem Leben eines prominenten Paars der amerikanischen Literatur-Szene interessiert, möchte so akribisch über den Vorrat an Schlaf- und Beruhigungsmitteln im Haus unterrichtet werden. Oates dokumentierter Trauerprozess beeindruckt durch exakte Beobachtung und besonders durch Auszüge ihrer Korrespondenz mit Freunden. Auch die Ära ausführlicher persönlicher Briefe steht kurz vor ihrem Ende. (less)

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Jan 11, 2013 Alicia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

" of the widow's countless death duties
there really is just ONE that matter's;
on the 1st anniversary of her husband's death~ the widow should think 'I kept myself alive' ~~pg 416
the last page~of this book....~
okay~~~~ my first official book review......
full disclosure ~
I got this book nigh over a year ago~ almost 2 years ago & then Laura got it & mailed me her copy ~unbeknownst to her~~ I had already ordered my copy~ she didn't finish the read - & so I have two copies ~my copy ha...more

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Aug 13, 2012 Aunt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: highly-recommend

This books stands alone in searing memoirs. Not only for widows but for anyone that has lost someone who simply cannot be replaced. The most mundane things are simply too difficult to bear and oftentimes well meaning friends make the journey that much harder. The moments that registered for me were the contemplation of an eternal sleep aided by doctors who tend to treat grieving women as raving banshees to be medicated. Then, of course, the endless bargaining with whatever is out there and in co...more

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Mar 03, 2012 Judith rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am fond of Oates fiction for the most part but this is the first nonfiction work of hers I have read. It was rated as one of the top ten books of 2011 by the LA Times, and I was interested in it because it is a memoir. In this book, she tells how she managed to deal with the sudden death of her beloved husband. I hardly feel qualified to criticize an author who is so talented, diverse, and prolific as she. It also feels cruel to criticize a memoir so heartfelt and painfully rendered as this on...more I am fond of Oates fiction for the most part but this is the first nonfiction work of hers I have read. It was rated as one of the top ten books of 2011 by the LA Times, and I was interested in it because it is a memoir. In this book, she tells how she managed to deal with the sudden death of her beloved husband. I hardly feel qualified to criticize an author who is so talented, diverse, and prolific as she. It also feels cruel to criticize a memoir so heartfelt and painfully rendered as this one. Having so qualified my review, I have to say it was a pretty depressing book, and too painfully slow to recommend it to anyone I know.

I did find it interesting that her experience so mirrored Joan Didion's book on the passing of her husband. Both of them worked so closely with their husbands their whole lives. In Oates case, she and her husband even shared a car. It's hard to imagine a relationship so close that you only need one car between your spouse and yourself. I also enjoyed reading about how much she enjoyed teaching her college classes. She was angry and critical of many of the people who surrounded her, but she was always so cheerful and positive about her students and her teaching experience.

It was also interesting how she dealt with the condolences she received from friends and colleagues. She was inexplicably infuriated by gift baskets and in particular with "Harry & David" packages. As far as I could tell, she was insulted that people thought she could be consoled by food. So she threw out all of the packages of food that arrived. She didn't even bother to give them away, but threw them unopened in the trash. She actually went to the trouble of going out and buying an extra trash can to hold all the extra food baskets and boxes.

I loved the parts where she related the joy of her married life with her husband. She adored him, and it's always interesting to see inside another couple's marriage. She said he rarely, if ever, read her fiction. And they did not bring up unhappy subjects to each other because they never wanted to upset each other. Different strokes. (less)

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Feb 28, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Joyce Carol Oates has written a deeply felt memoir, `A Widow's Story', following the sudden death of Raymond Smith, her husband of 48 years. He enters the hospital for pneumonia and "A secondary infection had caused cardiopulmonary arrest, and he was gone. It was just utterly unbelievable. I feel so completely alone. Though surrounded by the most wonderful friends". Because the prognosis for Ray was good when Joyce left the hospital, she went home to sleep and was not there when he died. She get...more Joyce Carol Oates has written a deeply felt memoir, `A Widow's Story', following the sudden death of Raymond Smith, her husband of 48 years. He enters the hospital for pneumonia and "A secondary infection had caused cardiopulmonary arrest, and he was gone. It was just utterly unbelievable. I feel so completely alone. Though surrounded by the most wonderful friends". Because the prognosis for Ray was good when Joyce left the hospital, she went home to sleep and was not there when he died. She gets a phone call after midnight telling her that her husband is still alive but by the time she gets to the hospital he is dead.

Joyce questions her judgment. Should she have brought him to the emergency room sooner? "Always I will think; as I exercised poor judgment, bringing Ray to the regional Princeton hospital, and keeping him there when he would surely have received superior care elsewhere, so my judgment is faulty now, inexplicable." Joyce is in a haze. She second guesses herself repeatedly and wonders if she had taken different action would Ray still be alive.

Following Ray's death, Joyce is bombarded by what she terms "death duties". Her life is fraught with paperwork: death certificates, executor duties, attorneys, condolence cards, and even the DMV. She is in a haze, feeling all alone and frequently considering suicide. She keeps a cache of pills that she's accumulated from the past and pills she gets now - codeine, sleeping pills, lorazepam, etc. She can't sleep. Every night she faces insomnia. "Where some may be frightened by the thought, the temptation, of suicide, the widow is consoled by the temptation of suicide. For suicide promises A good night's sleep - with no interruptions! And no next-day."

The book is steeped in grief and the ever-present identity of herself as "the widow". "For it is clear - widow trumps all other identities, including rational individual." She speaks of the epiphanies that come with grief. "But grief will not bring us much else." "For a widow has learned that the ordinary can so quickly turn extraordinary, and the extraordinary ordinary."

Joyce is so broken that she can rarely speak on the telephone. She finds it impossible to answer letters of condolences. She does not know what to do with all the flowers, presents from `Harry and David's', and when the doorbell rings she runs to the back of her house to avoid answering it. She feels like the prisoner of the basilisk, a monster ever-present in her being.

"My discovery is: each day is livable if divided into segments. More accurately each day is livable only if divided into segments." There is the morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, and the evening. She has a `nest' in her bed which is the safest part of her life, a place she retreats to and never wants to leave. When she does manage to sleep for a while, it is almost impossible to awaken.

She finds that she can work and that speaking engagements keep her going. She also enjoys dinner engagements with very close friends, along with e-mailing them. She realizes that if she started cancelling engagements, "I might have canceled the next engagement. And the next. And one morning, I wouldn't get out of bed at all.

This is a raw book, a scab repeatedly picked at over and over till it bleeds. It is painful and immediate. Ms. Oates' grief is ever-present and without abate. It is an ode to her husband Ray and the story of her loss and attempts to go on without him. It is a book of magical thinking - for what if Ray is really alive? What if I looked around the bend and saw him? The book is personal and rings with truth. It is phenomenally sad and difficult to read but I found it to be immensely important. Any of us might be widows one day and this book let me into the shadow of that dark and terrible place.
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Jan 01, 2012 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I must admit, I do take a bit of an issue of a book like this being rated and ranked, because it is a tale of pain as Joyce Carol Oates comes to terms with her grief, finding herself now alone, without her lifeline. How can one rate and review the pain of another and how another grieved? Particularly, or maybe especially, if one has not suffered a terrible loss themselves? Despite whether people feel she was being mean-spirited, disjointed, or maybe even a little cold, people react to loss diffe...more I must admit, I do take a bit of an issue of a book like this being rated and ranked, because it is a tale of pain as Joyce Carol Oates comes to terms with her grief, finding herself now alone, without her lifeline. How can one rate and review the pain of another and how another grieved? Particularly, or maybe especially, if one has not suffered a terrible loss themselves? Despite whether people feel she was being mean-spirited, disjointed, or maybe even a little cold, people react to loss differently and even if there is a common loss shared between two people, the way they experience that loss is always going to be different. In reading reviews for this book (on both GoodReads and Amazon), I found some of the projections that people were making on how they would handle things in comparison to how JCO dealt with her grief a little disturbing and, at times, without any real merit.

Although I have not suffered the death of a spouse, I have lived through the death of a child and of both of my parents. While reading this book, I was able to really connect with JCO as she traveled the long and lonely world of grief. The grief she writes about, her actions, her disbelief, the feelings of being numb, of feeling lost, of not knowing what to do, of trying to move forward and of being cemented to the ground, anchored because you are afraid if you move on, you will forget -- is amazing, heartbreaking, and true to life. Trying to decide where to bury someone, what kind of ceremony it should include, having to navigate through the paperwork, dealing with people who haven't experienced what you just had, and not really feeling like things have changed, knowing they have, and not being able to deal with them -- this is what death is like for someone left behind.

And trying to find the way to cope: whether it is through writing, getting on the internet and meeting total strangers, going back to work right away, or trying to just find a way to make it through the day.

While I have always been a fan of JCO's fiction, this book humanized her, in all of her good qualities and bad, in her triumphs, trials, and complete failures.

The things she recalls about certain days, the small details like getting a parking ticket, the way the nurse looked at her, the cats misbehavior - I related so well, because those are how you mark the days. It is with those small details that when everything else feels so surreal, you are brought back to reality and realize the loss really happened, you are really experiencing this, and this is really your life.

I highly commend JCO for sharing that vulnerability with others. Grieving and death is looked upon oddly in our society, especially in comparison with other cultures, and for JCO to be very honest about it, to not romanticize about it, and to say, "Hey, I'm not ok. This has left me lost. What do I do now?" is refreshing. This book, along with C.S Lewis' A Grief Observed, are probably the most honest books about life, love, death, and loss.

I highly recommend reading it without prejudice and projection, especially for those that have experienced a loss of their own. It is hauntingly comforting.(less)

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Nov 03, 2011 Kathy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Since this is a memoir it is difficult to separate the author from the quality of her writing. Perhaps this is a well written book. But as a person I could find nothing about her to respect. I do believe her loss was the greatest pain she ever suffered but I do not believe her pain supercedes all other pain anyone else has suffered by being widowed, divorced or beling alone. I found her to be weak, oh so needy, a name-dropper, completely self-absorbed, disdainful, mean-spirited and rude.

For me...more

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Oct 18, 2011 Susan Emmet rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Though I am writing this memoir to see what can be made of the phenomenon of 'grief' in the most exactingly minute of ways, I am no longer convinced that there is any inherent value in grief; or, if there is, if wisdom springs from the experience of terrible loss, it's a wisdom one might do without." I read excerpts of her memoir in the New Yorker and so was glad to find it at the library when I dumped a load of books, many of which meant alot to me long ago. The process of culling books is har...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Jannekb rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I’ve never cared much for her widely lauded, copious fiction, and I care even less for the frail and foolish person Joyce Smith (pen name Joyce Carol Oates) portrays herself to be in this memoir. When her elderly husband, Raymond Smith, dies suddenly of pneumonia, JCO is left utterly unmoored and writes frequently of feeling suicidal, unloved, and without meaning now that her beloved is gone. While she talks a good game about stockpiling pills and lying in bed wishing to sleep and never wake up,...more I’ve never cared much for her widely lauded, copious fiction, and I care even less for the frail and foolish person Joyce Smith (pen name Joyce Carol Oates) portrays herself to be in this memoir. When her elderly husband, Raymond Smith, dies suddenly of pneumonia, JCO is left utterly unmoored and writes frequently of feeling suicidal, unloved, and without meaning now that her beloved is gone. While she talks a good game about stockpiling pills and lying in bed wishing to sleep and never wake up, after hundreds of pages of essentially the same series of internal dialogues, even a depressive with compulsive suicidal ideation like myself, who was so very likely to be sympathetic to her travails, is left impatiently thinking - build a bridge and get over it already. JCO then proceeds to unearth her husband’s unfinished, unpublished, and transparently autobiographical novel “Black Mass” which was written in his twenties (he died in his late seventies), and regurgitates portions and plot summaries to the horrified reader - even selections her husband crossed out and clearly did not intend to include. Raymond Smith was an editor by trade, and by all accounts a very talented one. JCO should have trusted his decisions to excise, to withhold, to NOT PUBLISH THIS NOVEL. In presenting the content of “Black Mass,” she boldly and self-righteously airs the dirty laundry of her husband’s Roman Catholic family of origin, a family she and her husband were never close to during their long marriage. Of the Catholic Church and its teaching, she writes, “How ridiculous such notions seem to us. To some of us.” JCO comes across as rude, dismissive, arrogant, and is frequently demeaning of her friends and acquaintances, many of whose expressions and acts of sympathy were apparently merely annoying to her, but she saves her strongest feelings of disdain for Roman Catholics. “We’d agreed, there is no salvation, as there is no need for salvation. The world, like the garden, simply is.” And yet, if she was willing to be saved, to trust in a power greater than herself or her husband or her career, her life might not seem to be, in the end, merely and abjectly casting about in the “inifinite whirl, alone.” Perhaps this is what Godlessness and an outright rejection of familial bonds creates: meaninglessness. Did she expect her seventy-eight year old husband would live forever? Did she never stop to look ahead, to consider the realities of human existence? We are all going to die, sooner or later. This is not a book of tragedy, or survival of tragedy. It tries to be, in one final sentence, but there was no build to that last, false note – aside from brief moments in her husband’s garden, where she believes his spirit resides, but JCO has made it clear that she does not believe in souls and spirits and afterlife, merely the long black silence of not-being. It is not surprising that such a belief system would generate such a long, fruitless, and painfully bitter memoir as this.(less)

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Jul 24, 2011 Karen Codner rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Leí este libro en español ( me cansa demasiado leer en inglés). La traducción de María Luisa Rodríguez es muy buena.
Fue una delicia leer estas memorias. Hay que tener valentía para publicar tanto dolor, tan certero y profundo. Sobre todo hoy, en un mundo donde la mayoría dudamos que aún existan matrimonios felices y compenetrados.
Y sobre todo hoy, donde escondemos los sentimientos detrás de la pantalla, del teclado y de la inmediatez.
Desde el punto de vista literario, lo que más se valora es l...more

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Jul 11, 2011 Jane rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have read only two novels by JC Oates and I'm sorry to say I didn't much care for either one. A distant acquaintance had met JCO at a reading and reported that she is smart and nice. With that background, I began this memoir, and I could not put it down. Despite being a very private person, JCO reveals many personal and nitty-gritty details of the time around her husband's death and of earlier stages of their marriage. She struck me, too, as a smart and nice person, one not living in a differe...more

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Jun 25, 2011 Tessa Rose rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The title of this book describes exactly what it is. Joyce Carol Oates takes the reader on a journey through the intimate pain of losing her husband after decades of marriage. Unafraid as a writer, Oates allows us genuine glimpses into her struggle to live through the days of her husband's illness, death, and the following year of her life. I feel like this was a "right place, right time" book for me. I was genuinely surprised by how completely it captured my attention and inhabited my heart. I...more

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Jun 19, 2011 Darrow rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The loss of Joyce's husband and her memoir of it's aftermath were surreal to me. It's a subject that's hard to think about, let alone face. Even though she's got tons of friends she still has to navigate her way through the grieving and healing process herself. The voice of the book is written in the third person, "the widow feels that", etc. which I thought was a little different. I think it may have been a way for her to re-identify herself in her new, unwanted role. I started reading the book...more

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Jun 01, 2011 Janice Williams rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

A Widow's Story
Joyce Carol Oates

I am feeling a bit hesitant to write a Review (with a capital R) of this recently published book by Joyce Carol Oates for I am not qualified to critique her writing, only my heart and mind's reaction to the story she has told. With that caveat, I will share my impressions with you.

I purchased this book because, while I am not a widow, I am interested in how people adjust to life-altering situations; how they feel and what choices they make moving forward. Relation...more

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May 11, 2011 Hoosier rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After reading the 400+ pages of "A Widow's Story" written by Joyce Smith, aka Joyce Carol Oats (JCO), I have no idea whether JCO intended to write a book to honor the memory of her husband, Ray; to talk about her life as a widow; or to recount her various successes. While JCO does a beautiful job, at times, discussing the aftermath of her life after Ray's death, the unclear focus of the book detracts from the story. I have difficulty recommending this book unless one wants to learn more about JC...more After reading the 400+ pages of "A Widow's Story" written by Joyce Smith, aka Joyce Carol Oats (JCO), I have no idea whether JCO intended to write a book to honor the memory of her husband, Ray; to talk about her life as a widow; or to recount her various successes. While JCO does a beautiful job, at times, discussing the aftermath of her life after Ray's death, the unclear focus of the book detracts from the story. I have difficulty recommending this book unless one wants to learn more about JCO's life.

The book begins with JCO's recount of a trip she took to the hospital to visit Ray. At the end of the brief hospital trip, JCO finds an extemely rude letter that had been left on her windshield that serves to shed light on the insensibility of some people to the hardships of others. She describes her thoughts on this note in a short paragraph at the end of the chapter. I found that these personal stories inserted by JCO in italics at the end of many chapters were the most enjoyable part of the book. For example, JCO showed insight when she described that many widows may call their home voicemail after their husband's death only to hear their husband's voice on the voicemail recording.

JCO describes herself as an independant women who lived a life apart, both mentally and physically, from her husband. JCO visited Ray in the hospital everyday for only short periods of time and she and Ray worked on their own projects during most of those visits. JCO took many business trips away from Ray during their marriage and they only ever shared good news with each other for fear of hurting the other person with bad news. After Ray's death, however, JCO contemplates suicide and devotes over half of the book to her suicidal ideation. I therefore found it difficult to reconcile the post-Ray JCO with the pre-Ray JCO.

Furthermore, I cannot determine if JCO comprises her morals only due to the devastation she suffers from Ray's death or she truly is a callous person. For example, JCO throws away most of the sympathy gift baskets that she receives, even before opening them, and does not read many of the condolence notes sent to her. She describes people that send her books to review or comment on as "predator sharks" and cannot believe that "their naivete in imagining that any publication of theirs, any achievement, will make the slightest difference in their lives, or in the lives of others." JCO also forgets to let one of her elderly cats in on a cold night and the cat dies from frostbite.
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May 03, 2011 Lynne Perednia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For 48 years and 25 days, Joyce Carol Oates thought of herself not as the author Joyce Carol Oates, but as Joyce Smith, wife of Raymond Smith, professor and editor of The Ontario Review. That thinking, that life, is abruptly shattered in the middle of a February night in 2008 when she receives a call from the hospital where she had taken her pneumonia-stricken husband a few days earlier, summoning her to get there quicky because her husband was still alive.

When she got there, he wasn't.

The guilt...more For 48 years and 25 days, Joyce Carol Oates thought of herself not as the author Joyce Carol Oates, but as Joyce Smith, wife of Raymond Smith, professor and editor of The Ontario Review. That thinking, that life, is abruptly shattered in the middle of a February night in 2008 when she receives a call from the hospital where she had taken her pneumonia-stricken husband a few days earlier, summoning her to get there quicky because her husband was still alive.

When she got there, he wasn't.

The guilt, the grief, the bewilderment, the anger and the depression of those first few hours, days and weeks are chronicled in A Widow's Story. The anguish is unrelenting and the chronicling deal with both the minutiae and large-scale ramifications to daily living and to one's sense of self and value of living.

Reaction to the memoir has centered on comparing this work to Joan Didion's brilliant memoir when she lost both her husband and daughter, and to Oates's remarrying soon after her first husband's death. It's been uniformly negative, with a level of disdain puzzling to someone who has only read a few short stories and one novel of the author's. They had macabre elements but also poignant moments. It's possible to see the curiosity of the author behind the stories, wondering how people would feel if placed in such a situation or how different characteristics would produce different reactions. Those explorations are legitimate reasons to write fiction and should certainly be welcome within the scope of a major reason for fiction to exist: To explore the human condition in its myriad complicated, glorious forms. Oates displays the same kind of intellectual curiosity to her own reactions when her husband dies.

Oates may well be bringing up Didion when she writes late in her book about another well-known writer, a friend, whose husband died and who wrote a best-selling memoir about the experience. The friend writes a letter to Oates about being stunned and how getting over that was a huge obstacle. Oates uses that as a springboard to wonder how much of grief is vanity. She returns to a trope she uses time and again throughout the book: That the widow should be punished, should be ridiculed, should be made miserable by the judgment of others.

While many other writers would stick with the original idea about being stunned, and a few others might take that as the foundation for a treatise on guilt, Oates instead goes into the territory of her insomnia, the medication she is fitfully taking for it and how taking it takes away discernment. Perhaps this is the basis for much criticism of Oates's writing. She certainly piles it on in this book, one idea going to another to another to another in non-linear fashion. Some readers may want to let each idea have its own space and time.

But just as Oates's story is not Didion's, neither are they going to view their experiences in the same way or write about them in the same way. So to criticize Oates for not writing like Didion is to criticize her for not being another person.

Even more major has been the criticism that Oates does not reveal in her memoir that she remarried 11 months after her husband's death. In the final pages, this man is mentioned obliquely as an unexpected guest to a dinner party in her home, that her life will be altered after that evening and that anything which is a gift is given not because it is deserved but because it is a gift.

Oates gives the reason why she would remarry earlier on, though, quoting a letter she wrote to a friend two months after her husband's death. She writes about how hard it is to live alone, that she cannot concentrate and that she worries about being able to keep on living this way. She also writes that she would likely still not be alive if not for her friends. So it's no wonder she sought solace by marrying again. Some people thrive on solitude, some do not. Some honor their late spouses by craving the continuance of the kind of life they led with their spouse.

For other people to condemn Oates because she didn't react the same way that Didion did, or that they think she should react, is a petty reaction. To be condemned for not being someone else or for not seeing things with the same perspective as the person doing the judging is to deny the humanity of the person condemned. Oates, with her insistence on the widow being punished, appears to know in advance she would be judged harshly. And she includes events that do not put her in a good light, such as one concerning one of their cats who preferred Ray over her, but which a good novelist would include in a book about a flawed character.

Yes, Oates's memoir is bloated and repetitive. But it also is a chronicle of a very low point in someone's life and how she has chosen to recount it. She does honor her late husband by conveying what a kind and gentle man he was, by writing about his garden, his work and his unfinished, unpublished novel that she reads after his death. In writing about that novel, Oates also shows how she begins to come to terms with her husband's death by answering for herself questions she has about him after he dies. Writers interested in the process of creating fiction should be drawn to the story of Raymond Smith's lifelong work in progress and how a prolific novelist looks at that work.

A Widow's Story may be far from a "perfect" representation, no matter how a reader defines perfection, but it is a worthwhile testament to what the experience of sudden widowhood meant in the early going to one woman.
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Apr 28, 2011 Lorrie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was attracted to this memoir because it was written by a well-known novelist. I knew nothing about her, really, other than the persistent thought that her picture reminded me of Olive Oyl. Her other novels are somewhat dark and dreary, so I've only stuck with a few to the end.

The author writes about her life after her husband of 48 years, Ray, dies suddenly after contracting a viral infection in the hospital as he recovered from pneumonia. When she speaks of her life from the first few minutes...more I was attracted to this memoir because it was written by a well-known novelist. I knew nothing about her, really, other than the persistent thought that her picture reminded me of Olive Oyl. Her other novels are somewhat dark and dreary, so I've only stuck with a few to the end.

The author writes about her life after her husband of 48 years, Ray, dies suddenly after contracting a viral infection in the hospital as he recovered from pneumonia. When she speaks of her life from the first few minutes of understanding that her husband was gone, through the first year, I could say that in many ways that her story was my story and other widows' stories too. If you can think of her first a woman and much less as an author, you will see some universal characteristics of women who lose their husbands--the loss of meaning, the intense grief, the contemplation of suicide, and the enormous task of dealing with the funeral on down to taking his name off the water bill (which I still haven't done.)
She wrestles with the endless deliveries of sympathy cards, gifts, and flowers and all the well meaning people who acknowledge her husband's death before they talk to her about her work. Soon after his death, she resumes her professional life as an author and professor and seemingly becomes a different person who can block out the grief as she does her work.

I thought it was interesting that, although her husband took care of all of their finances including her book income, he never read any of her books. I just can't imagine that, but maybe that kept them from getting into arguments over critical remarks. I was amused to know that she never tells her students anything about her personal life, whereas I was an open book for all my students. I guess those who are interested will read this memoir to satisfy their curiosities about her real life. After spending this lonely first year, she didn't waste much time before she remarried. I think that's a mistake, but what do I know? I hope she writes a memoir about this second marriage, and I hope it's juicy! (less)

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Apr 19, 2011 Meg Ulmes rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I first saw the advertisement for this memoir in the New York Times Book Review, I knew that I had to read it. Several weeks later when I found it on the new book shelf in my local library, I knew that it would be a challenge for me to read because I am still going through the grieving process. When I scanned the first few pages of the memoir and discovered that Ms. Oates' husband had died within 11 days of my own in 2008, I knew the book would speak to me.

And it has. I have been challenged...more

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Apr 06, 2011 christa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think I handled the grieving process better when John Dunne died than when Raymond Smith did. Something about Joyce Carol Oates' memoir "A Widow's Story," chronicling the aftermath of her forever husband sudden death, had me weeping before appointments, at Subway, and especially in bed. I don't remember Joan Didion's version, which proceeded this one by about five years and included a sick daughter, making me feel like someone broke my heart in half and dropped the pieces into a garbage dispos...more I think I handled the grieving process better when John Dunne died than when Raymond Smith did. Something about Joyce Carol Oates' memoir "A Widow's Story," chronicling the aftermath of her forever husband sudden death, had me weeping before appointments, at Subway, and especially in bed. I don't remember Joan Didion's version, which proceeded this one by about five years and included a sick daughter, making me feel like someone broke my heart in half and dropped the pieces into a garbage disposal.

The world's most prolific writer*, a woman who seemingly emits better-than-decent novels like they are mere finger belches, spent almost a year in silence. Unable to make enough words or the right words to cure the ache of losing her life partner. But when she finally does get down to the business of recording this place in time, she does it with sentences that are fits and bursts. Little poetic blurts, sentences riddled with long dashes that seem perfectly in line with the brain broken in sorrow.

Oates opens her memoir with a time both she and her husband should have died. A year earlier they had been in a car accident that triggered the car's airbags and left them bruised -- but giddy with how alive they still were. Then when it wasn't expected, Ray developed pneumonia and got an infection in the hospital. Oates received the terrible phone call, rushed to the hospital, but got there too late. She imagines the way he died surrounded by strangers late at night. The paragraphs where she collects his things, his glasses, his papers is one massive soul suck.

From there things get a little repetitious. The minutia and the legalities involved with having a dead spouse, the inability to sleep paired with the unwillingness to take sleeping pills, the avoidance of certain rooms in the house they shared. Ghost images. The fear of learning something about her husband that will change the way he is remembered.

Friends invite her to dinner. She exchanges emails with Richard Ford and Edmund White. She considers her cache of drugs and imagines how easy it would be to kill herself and then later, how much she doesn't want to do that.

There are some really magical scenes where she brings Raymond back to life by virtue of talking about their past. They met in a lecture hall. They spent a wretched year in Texas, which was worse than the years in Detroit. Raymond loved his garden. And the weirdest fact from the book: Raymond didn't read her fiction.

JCO marries again less than a year after Raymond's death. The romance isn't featured in these pages, but husband No. 2 gets the briefest of brief mentions in the final page of the book. After 400 plus pages, there is a little bit of cheer.

*This has not been proven by science.
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Apr 04, 2011 Amanda rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the story of how novelist Joyce Carol Oates lost her husband unexpectedly to a secondary infection he acquired while in the hospital. She was 70 (?), he was 77.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I read the first half quite quickly; it was highly emotional, and highly engaging. Around the half-way point though, it was simply exhausting and redundant, even melodramatic. It may sound caustic and unfeeling, but her voice is SO highly charged that it began to sound as though she...more This is the story of how novelist Joyce Carol Oates lost her husband unexpectedly to a secondary infection he acquired while in the hospital. She was 70 (?), he was 77.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I read the first half quite quickly; it was highly emotional, and highly engaging. Around the half-way point though, it was simply exhausting and redundant, even melodramatic. It may sound caustic and unfeeling, but her voice is SO highly charged that it began to sound as though she were screeching her way through the narrative, and at times it was difficult to take her seriously.

I'm surprised that Oates wrote this book, because it is not very flattering. Her grief is such that it cannot be considered normal or natural. Rather, it stems from a co-dependent relationship that left her unable to function as an individual, separate and apart from the entity that was "Ray-and-Joyce" for nearly fifty years. This book would actually be a very useful case study of co-dependency, the inability to distinguish where one person ends and the other begins. What's so sad is that Oates doesn't see this, and chose to share it with the world. It exposes her too much, I think, and I felt embarrassed for her.

If you know the rest of the story, you know that Oates remarried less than a year after her husband's passing. This, too, speaks volumes about her lack of self-efficacy. I saw a piece in Newsweek a few weeks back where well-known people, including Oates, were asked what they thought of some new gadget. It was not insignificant that she replied, "My husband Charlie . . . " She seems to define her experience through her relation to another, her intimate "other." It's no wonder, then, that when "my husband died; my world collapsed," as she writes early on in the book.

This book also supports a theory that I have that when people who live blessed, near-perfect lives get older, they have a much harder time coping with any sort of setback or loss that life sends their way. They have never honed the vital skills of resiliency and resourcefulness. They simply don't know how to survive the storms of life that others have weathered time and again.

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Mar 27, 2011 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: healing, happiness, death, relationships

I was kicking myself for choosing this book to read over spring break. What was I thinking? Joyce Carol Oates, National Book Award-winning author, suddenly and unexpectedly loses her husband of more than forty years and she falls apart. This book is a memoir of the months she spent after his death trying to use words, the one thing she has always been able to count on, to find a way to live again.

As a person who has studied happiness for many years, Oates did everything wrong. She secluded hers...more

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Mar 24, 2011 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I haven't read much by Joyce Carol Oates considering how much she has written. I read one or two of her novels when I was much younger and I'm a big fan of her short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" I have been feeling disappointed by memoir as a genre lately, but the Times Book Review spoke very highly of Oates' new contribution, so I requested a galley.

The book begins on a normal day with Oates just returning from a speaking engagement. When she arrives, she finds that her hu...more I haven't read much by Joyce Carol Oates considering how much she has written. I read one or two of her novels when I was much younger and I'm a big fan of her short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" I have been feeling disappointed by memoir as a genre lately, but the Times Book Review spoke very highly of Oates' new contribution, so I requested a galley.

The book begins on a normal day with Oates just returning from a speaking engagement. When she arrives, she finds that her husband has gotten ill while she was away. It is incredibly pedestrian, and yet from the first pages her story compelled me. Husband and wife fuss and decide that they won't wait to see their general practitioner, deciding instead to go to the emergency room, where Ray (Oates' husband of almost 50 years), is admitted with pneumonia. Considering the title of the book, it is no spoiler to say that, only a few days later, Ray passes away. And yet, reading those heart-wrenching chapters, I felt like I was reading a brilliantly crafted work of fiction. I could turn the pages fast enough on my I-pad; I was rooting for Ray despite knowing the outcome. The suddenness of his passing was distressing and the portrayal of Oates throughout rang to me as heart-breakingly accurate.

After Ray's death, Oates explores what it means to be a widow and how she coped-with the help of friends and work and medications- in the months following her loss. There are sad moments and funny moments, and the reader feels the surreality of the writer's current state. Throughout the book, however, she writes with clarity and a competency that reminds us that she is a professional story teller. She explores the form of the memoir, eventually coming to the realization that "all memoirs are journeys. investigations. Some memoirs are pilgrimages." She sees her journey as the latter.

I felt like I was on the journey with her, and it seemed to be a journey in many senses. Not only did Oates embark on the obvious journey of coming to terms with the death of her partner of many decades, it also seems to be a journey in which she merges her identity as Joyce Smith with her writer's persona-Joyce Carol Oates, or as she refers to her- JCO. She claims midway through the book that she has "walled [her]self off from 'Joyce Carol Oates,'" and has also created "walls" between herself and Ray by keeping their professional identities separate from their identity as a married couple. Through the book, she gets to know Ray better in crucial ways, and that is part of the journey as well.

What I liked best about the book was its readability. Like I mentioned earlier, the reader knows that she is in the hands of a professional. I also found the book honest - at times beautiful and at others baffling. The author doesn't hide the moments in her relationship that some of us might find a bit strange (What? They didn't read each others' writing?). Overall, this might be one of the best memoirs I've read, and it makes me more than likely to pick up some more of Oates' fiction in the future.

Full Disclosure: I received a galley of this book from the publisher. (less)

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Mar 23, 2011 Fred Moramarco rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"I can wade Grief/Whole pools of it" wrote Emily Dickinson, and Joyce Carol Oates does a considerable amount of wading in her deeply felt memoir, "A Widow's Story," written in the three years following her husband, Raymond Smith's, death in February, 2008. Although her remarriage just a bit over a year later certainly brings a happy ending to this grief chronicle, it is nowhere mentioned in the book. The Times reviewer Janet Maslin made this notion a central focus of her review, and though it is...more "I can wade Grief/Whole pools of it" wrote Emily Dickinson, and Joyce Carol Oates does a considerable amount of wading in her deeply felt memoir, "A Widow's Story," written in the three years following her husband, Raymond Smith's, death in February, 2008. Although her remarriage just a bit over a year later certainly brings a happy ending to this grief chronicle, it is nowhere mentioned in the book. The Times reviewer Janet Maslin made this notion a central focus of her review, and though it is a legitimate issue, Maslin treats it with an unpalatable meanness. Perhaps she was influenced by these sentences cruelly juxtaposed in Oates' Wikipedia entry: "Since my husband's unexpected death, I really have very little energy[...]My marriage--my love for my husband--seems to have come first in my life, rather than my writing. Set beside his death, the future of my writing scarcely interests me at the moment." In early 2009 Oates married Professor Charles Gross of the Psychology Department and Neuroscience Institute at Princeton.

Surely one is glad to learn that the pain and anguish obviously experienced and so fully described in "A Widow's Story," subsided relatively quickly and that she was able to "move on" and find a new chapter in her life. But her memoir deals primarily with the several months after the shock of Smith's "unexpected" death. Oates repeats the word "unexpected" many times in the book, and it made me aware of how deeply our American denial of aging and death is. When a man is age 79, as Smith was when he died, he has already lived a year or two beyond the average life expectancy for American men, yet his death is still regarded as unexpected, as though we have somehow triumphed over mortality.

Because women outlive men by nearly a decade or more, the widow's grief memoir has become something of a genre of its own. I've been writing a series of essays on aging, and I've read a half-dozen or more of them in the last few years, starting with Joan Didion's stunning "The Year of Magical Thinking," about the unexpected death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, through Anne Roiphe's "Epilogue," Eleanor Clift's "Two Weeks of Life," Sandra Gilbert's "Wrongful Death," and Antonia Fraser's "Must You Go?" the latter about her life with Harold Pinter. In fact, Oates' memoir makes me think of the phenomenon as not only a genre but an industry. On the back cover of my advance edition of the book the publisher touts a huge marketing campaign including print, radio, online media, a 13-city author tour and even an "Outreach to Grief Awareness Groups." Death not only thrives in America; it sells.

Despite that, this book appears a searingly honest account of a major life trauma, although several aspects of it kept nagging at me as I read it. Nearly all of these grief memoirs give me a sense of how proprietary people are about their own grief. "A Widow's Story" is certainly no exception. Although death and loss are as common as beach sand, I came away from the book admiring the first few sections of it (that I read serialized The New Yorker) more than I did the remaining more than three-hundred pages which are characterized by a good deal of repetition, a lot of "widow" definition, and a prevailing sense that nothing like this wonderfully devoted couple ever existed before. There is also a great deal about how separated the writer of this book feels from her own persona, the highly productive "Joyce Carol Oates," but very little about how Raymond Smith might have felt being "Mr. Joyce Carol Oates."
There are, however, beneath the surface, several clear indications that things might not have been quite so bucolic as they seem. First of all, this couple, who spent hardly any time apart from one another since their meeting in 1960, avoided many important issues that cropped up between them. Oates said that Smith never liked to discuss his relationship with his father, he never liked to talk about anything negative, he never discussed his strict religious upbringing and the influence of religion on his life, and most significantly, he never read any of her fiction. This struck me as especially unusual, since he was himself a literary critic and editor, and certainly must have had some curiosity about his wife's work. But the reasons for the avoidance become clearer as we learn about an unfinished novel that Smith worked on and off on throughout his life. So here is a man unable to complete a single work of fiction in his 79 years of life married to the most prolific fiction writer in America. Hmmm. We get very little inkling of how he felt about this. Oates avoids (or withholds) reading the manuscript of this novel until the very last chapters of her book, and when she does she discovers things about her husband and their relationship of which she was never before aware.

But all this is carping, because this may be Joyce Carol Oates' best book (I can't really say because I have only read about a half dozen of them). In any case, it's the first book she has written where we get inside her own nerve endings rather than her vivid imagination, and we experience with her the disorientation that the end of a major life chapter can bring. Although she ultimately realizes, as many do when they learn something startling about someone they thought they knew well, that between even the most intimate among us there is "something unknowable, inaccessible. A stubborn intractable intransigent otherness." I'm very glad to have read it because it bridges a bit of that intransigent otherness at least between her readers and herself.
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Mar 23, 2011 Adele Griffin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

JCO is the meryl streep of literature and I am always awed by the was she slips into so many different, pitch-perfect narrative identities. her talent is chilling, and while i have read a number of her nonfiction reviews and essays over the years, nothing captivates me more than her epic novels--them, Blonde, We Were the Mulvaneys are among my absolute favorites. I was curious about this memoir because i couldnt imagine how she might let anyone through the hall of mirrors to this core, personal...more

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Mar 19, 2011 K2 ----- rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oates speaks of wanting to write a widow's handbook and indeed this is what she has created. Although everyone's grief experience is different her willingness to lay her experience bare will no doubt be of great comfort to many widows who are readers. I sent off two copies of the book to friends who are recent widows as soon as I completed reading it even though I can't imagine anyone having the concentration for six to nine months after one's mate's death. I also think it would be a good book f...more
Oates speaks of wanting to write a widow's handbook and indeed this is what she has created. Although everyone's grief experience is different her willingness to lay her experience bare will no doubt be of great comfort to many widows who are readers. I sent off two copies of the book to friends who are recent widows as soon as I completed reading it even though I can't imagine anyone having the concentration for six to nine months after one's mate's death. I also think it would be a good book for widowers to read in that is so vividly describes that feeling that nothing could be the same after such a deep loss and that Humpty Dumpty feeling.

I had to wonder how this book would strike someone who wasn't already a Joyce Carol Oates fan but I thought it was very well done. I have dipped into her fiction many times selectively and enjoyed most of what I have read. Black Water still haunts me and still holds powerful images in my mind. Oates discipline, as a writer, is amazing, having written some 115 books. I was surprised how candid she was in this book as she has always struck me as a rather shy person. My only complaint is that the book could have been ended shortly after the 300th page when it begins to lose some of its energy.

How could it be she lived almost five decades in a marriage without wanting to discuss unpleasantries with your mate and without him reading any of her novels? I found this to be quite surprising, but then again people have different ways of relating inside a marriage.

Janet Maslin of the NYT was hypercritical of the fact that Oates doesn't mention that she began another relationship and married before her two year mark as a widow, but I didn't find this criticism of merit. She was writing about her experience as a widow and the book was about her relationship with first husband and that profound loss. I don't think she was obligated to bring her new husband into the picture unless she chose to. I am happy she found someone to pair up with and I wish her all the happiness in the world, it must not be easy after almost fifty years with the same mate. (less)

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About Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is also the recipient of the 2005 Prix Femina for The Falls. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and she has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. Pseudonyms ... Rosamond Smith and Laure ...more

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“There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it.” — 36 people liked it

“I am made to think, not for the first time, that in my writing I have plunged ahead-head-on, heedlessly one might say-or 'fearlessly'- into my own future: this time of utter raw anguished loss. Though I may have had, since adolescence, a kind of intellectual/literary precocity, I had not experienced much;nor would I experience much until I was well into middle age-the illnesses and deaths of my parents, this unexpected death of my husband. We play at paste till qualified for pearl says Emily Dickinson. Playing at paste is much of our early lives. And then, with the violence of a door slammed shut by wind rushing through a house, life catches up with us.” — 4 people liked it

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