[Greene's] writing — about sudden death, family relationships, marriage, spirituality and healing — is a revelation of lightness and agility. That he managed to keep his facility for language during a period where it often disappears is a miracle. He has created a narrative of grief and acceptance that is compulsively readable and never self-indulgent ... the one character I wanted more of was Susan.
Needless to say, it’s heartbreaking. I read much of it through a blur of tears. But Greene’s book is also heartwarming, a valuable addition to the literature of grief ... Their story is not just of loss, but of their remarkable love, which helps them through this tragedy ... The first section painfully reconstructs the immediate aftermath of the accident, including excruciating hours at their daughter’s hospital bedside ... Aware that his story will reliably elicit shock and tears, Greene at one point bitterly calls himself 'a rock star of grief.' But he also writes gorgeously of grief ... Greene’s writerly skills are in evidence throughout this book. He opens with a lovely memory of the only time his daughter dipped her feet in ocean water, shortly before her death ... luminous.
Once More We Saw Stars is a quietly heartbreaking memoir ... It would be totally understandable to fear this story might be too bleak to face—indeed, there would be something strange about not worrying about that. Yet it’s an intensely moving, life-affirming story about a young couple moving through the darkest depths of grief together ... Once More We Saw Stars gets brutally intimate about the details of grief and loss, with two shattered people improvising their own healing rituals ... in Greene’s masterful and compassionate hands, it becomes a love story.
