Book Review: The Grief of Others by Leah Cohen

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . September 2, 2011 . 5:35PM

Sometimes it takes me a while to determine how I feel about a novel. In the first 6 pages of The Grief of Others by Leah Cohen, I recognized this book was special. I found myself clutching my chest as I empathized and closing my eyes because sometimes you can find magic in a novel. In the introduction, the author describes how Ricky, the mother in the novel, longs to bottle her infant’s breaths so she can keep them forever. I related to this so much. Even though my son is now 10, I find myself having those thoughts at times.

Throughout the novel, we find the family of four, John, Ricky, Paul and their daughter Biscuit, struggle to come to grips with the death of their infant, Simon. Simon was born with a defect that led to his head not fully forming and he died within 3 days of birth. Ricky, who knew he was going to have this defect, chose not to disclose this to anyone, including John, and the repercussions of this come to affect everyone in the family, even John’s daughter from a former relationship, who shows up on their doorstep.

There is no protagonist in this novel. There are equal amounts of grief and distress for all of the characters in this book and I felt my heart reach out to them equally. Frequently I wondered why the adults in this novel had such difficulty connecting to their children. Even prior to the death of Simon, John and Ricky still did not seem to have a great ability to reach out to Paul and Biscuit. This manifests in Biscuit cutting school and enacting death rituals to celebrate the life of Simon and Paul’s inability to sleep at night and allowing himself to be bullied at school. Jessica, John’s first child, shows up on their doorstep after no contact for eight years, pregnant and mysterious.

The difficulty with this novel is the disjointed nature of the situations. No one in the novel seems capable of connecting with anyone else on any level. The self-absorbed nature of people is on display and it made it hard to want good things for them. However, the very realistic situations that were portrayed and Ricky’s expression of feelings for the child she lost could absolutely take my breath away, at times. This hints to me that there could have been a great deal more to this story, but with so much going on, it just felt lost to me. Overall, I’d recommend it as a read for those that may need someone to relate to who is going through grief and for those that feel to raw to express this to other people. I never really understood the grief of anyone but Biscuit and Ricky, but maybe that can be enough. I have lukewarm feelings but some of the writing was so beautifully done that I am reluctant to give this a bad review. It’s worth it for those brief moments of inspiration alone.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in order to review it and share my thoughts.