Thursday, November 3, 2011

The Alchemy of Loss: A Young Widow's Transformation by Abigail Carter


Abigail Carter lost her husband, Arron, who was in the Windows on the World restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center on 9/11. She writes about her grieving process in the years after as she raises her two children and tries to orient herself and them to life without their dad.

Grueling but honest, this is probably one of the best books I've read about grief.

This book was in stark contrast to A Year and Six Seconds that I recently reviewed. I know that the writer in A Year and Six Seconds was dealing with divorce, not death. But reading these two books back to back made it very clear how much more in-depth The Alchemy of Loss was and how much more Carter let the grief process take its course. There's no happy ending per se, just movement in her grief. She's willing to confront and feel her grief (all forms of it, including anger), and that makes this book very real.

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