A "grief-and-relief" memoir tackling all the things we're too afraid to say about death, marriage, sex, and how the death of a husband can lead to a rebirth.
... unapologetic and unbridled ... The book will surely offer succor to anyone who has gone through a significant loss but especially to those who can admit that the death afforded a release.
Woolf loves her symbols — and she’s good at them ... Woolf interrogates both the conventional narratives of femininity and motherhood that kept her in a marriage she hated and the infidelity and lies that felt like her only way out ... All of This is a lot. Woolf is at her best when deep in the details, conjuring her experience onto the page with her rich command of imagery, metaphor, and symbol ... When Woolf tries to make her story into something bigger, she is less compelling. Her forceful declarations — on men, women, death, sex, widowhood, stories, memoirs — run a gamut from convincing to banal to meaningless. Her ruminative rambles are as repetitive as they are revealing ... We read memoirs of crisis and self-discovery to recognize ourselves and observe others. For some readers, Woolf’s lacerating commitment to her truth and to refusing the good widow narrative will resonate and reassure. Others may find it self-serving. Fortunately, there are more than enough truths to go around.
... eschews any such flattering postmortem revisions in favor of the messy, freeing truth ... Woolf does not mince words or deal in niceties in this memoir ... an all-encompassing portrait of a marriage that didn't work, and Woolf is as unflinchingly honest about that marriage as she is about the experience of loss that terminated it.
