On September 24, 2021, Rachel Eliza Griffiths married her husband, the novelist Salman Rushdie. On the same day, hundreds of miles of away, Griffiths' closest friend and chosen sister, the poet Kamilah Aisha Moon, who was expected to speak at the wedding, died suddenly. Eleven months later, as Griffiths attempted to piece together her life as a newlywed with heartbreak in one hand and immense love in the other, a brutal attack nearly killed her husband. As trauma compounded trauma, Griffiths realized that in order to survive her grief, she would need to mourn not only her friend, but the woman she had been on her wedding day, a woman who had also died that day.
Elegant and juicy ... Storytelling unafraid of poetry. Like a pudding, the prose here is both plain and rich ... It’s a lot, but it’s also gratifyingly lush. Griffiths gives us romance and romanticism.
The book is simultaneously a love story, a portrait of sisterhood and a visceral depiction of violence, loss and emotional devastation ... As one might expect from an author whose primary medium is poetry, the writing is evocative, full-bodied, perhaps a little overcooked in parts ... Goes to some dark places, but there is joy, too.
