It is a remarkable achievement: generous, honest, almost unbearably poignant. It reveals an aspect of Sandberg’s character that Lean In had suggested but — because of the elitism at its center — did not fully demonstrate: her impulse to be helpful. She has little to gain by sharing, in excruciating detail, the events of her life over the past two years. This is a book that will be quietly passed from hand to hand, and it will surely offer great comfort to its intended readers.
Sandberg exposes, with at-times heartbreaking honesty, the reality that nothing — not money, success or education, nor even the support of an online community — can inoculate you against the pain of grief that is delivered when least expected and very much out of the proper order of life. And in the telling of her own story, Sandberg becomes a most unlikely Every Widow ... time and again, Sandberg had me nodding my head in affirmation, uttering a silent 'Exactly right' or thinking, as I read a certain piece of advice, 'That would have been helpful' ... But the book is more than memoir, and so interspersed with such devastating scenes are equally powerful strategies for coping when your world has gone tilt.
...the candour of the book is at times uncomfortable. How Sandberg’s two children will feel in years to come about their mother’s willingness to publicly detail significant moments of their grieving for their father is moot. But, occasional winces aside, the book contains important messages both for individuals and for employers ... The call for a more compassionate workplace is an admirable one and, indeed, Option B is an admirable book. Not just because it is a testament to Sandberg’s courage in dealing with her husband’s death (as she points out, she had no choice), but because of her willingness to put herself out there again — despite the sometimes rancorous reactions to her first book — to draw lessons for others from her personal tragedy.
Like her début volume, Option B is an optimistic book, even if one riven with sorrow ... Thus the book is in part a moving memoir ... Sandberg, who is reportedly worth more than a billion and a half dollars, is quick to acknowledge the ways in which she is insulated from the economic insecurity felt by so many others after loss ... Sandberg’s vision in Option B of Facebook as a platform for the expression of empathy rings somewhat hollow. Perhaps that is inevitable, given that Facebook, like any business, is driven by numbers, and that its success as a business depends upon algorithms substituting for the kind of human judgment that motivates a friend, a family member, or a rabbi to care for another.
In an almost hacker-ish way, it seeks to transform a painful, tragic experience into something of use to people ... A Facebook post is concise in a way that can make the message end up feeling more managed. In Sandberg’s book, she gives us a little more—think Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking meets business case studies. Many of the anecdotes of others struggling with adversity are compelling, but in some cases with an asterisk. The emphasis on 'overcoming' has a tendency to shift the burden onto the individuals in a way that tacitly equates not overcoming with personal failure. I would have liked to have seen more stories of people genuinely grappling with societal forces that kept them marginalized and disenfranchised.
...Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg’s searing account of life after the sudden death of her husband, Dave Goldberg ... there is nothing off-putting about its content which is, at once, affecting, straightforward, revealing and useful, the latter perhaps for generations to come ... Written with Grant, but keeping his contributions to the third person, it is valuable on several levels, offering us, beyond Sandberg’s moving story, a panoply of ways to go through (rather than around, or stuck within) the many losses, great and small, that come to all of us ... But Sandberg is humbled by her loss — and speaks often of lessons learned 'only in death.' She also includes, in Option B, many examples — and statistics — of others finding resilience in the face of crisis, and, toward the book’s end, even offers tips for young widows on dating again.
Sandberg draws on her own pain around the sudden death of her husband, Dave, and shares what she has learned about resilience with a tone that is raw and candid ... Those suffering as well as those seeking to provide comfort should find both solace and wisdom in this book.
The challenges of moving forward are immense beyond understanding for anyone outside of the experience; this accounting of Sandberg’s resilience does for the process of grieving what her previous work has done for women in the workplace. A book that provides illuminating ways to make headway through the days when there doesn't seem to be a way forward.
