Guesswork: A Reckoning with Loss Contributor(s): Cooley, Martha (Author) |
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ISBN: 1936787466 ISBN-13: 9781936787463 Publisher: Catapult
WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD! Click here for our low price guarantee Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions Published: April 2017 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Women - Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs - Travel | Europe - Italy |
Dewey: B |
LCCN: 2016940497 |
Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.4" W x 8.2" L (0.55 lbs) 192 pages |
Themes: - Sex & Gender - Feminine - Cultural Region - Italy - Topical - Death/Dying |
Features: Price on Product |
Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 01/16/2017 Kirkus Reviews 03/01/2017 Shelf Awareness 05/16/2017 |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: [A] splendid and subtle memoir in essays --The New York Times Book Review Having lost eight friends in ten years, Cooley retreats to a tiny medieval village in Italy with her husband. There, in a rural paradise where bumblebees nest in the ancient cemetery and stray cats curl up on her bed, she examines a question both easily evaded and unavoidable: mortality. How do we grieve? How do we go on drinking our morning coffee, loving our life partners, stumbling through a world of such confusing, exquisite beauty? Linking the essays is Cooley's escalating understanding of another loss on the way, that of her ailing mother back in the States. Blind since Cooley's childhood, her mother relies on dry wit to ward off grief and pity. There seems no way for the two of them to discuss her impending death. But somehow, by the end, Cooley finds the words, each one graceful and wrenching. Part memoir, part loving goodbye to an unconventional parent, Guesswork transforms a year in a pastoral hill town into a fierce examination of life, love, death, and, ultimately, release. |
Contributor Bio(s): Cooley, Martha: - Martha Cooley is the author of the national bestseller The Archivist and Thirty-Three Swoons. The Archivist was a New York Times Notable Book and a New and Noteworthy paperback. Cooley is currently a contributing editor at A Public Space. Her co-translations of Italian fiction and poetry include Antonio Tabucchi's story collection Time Ages in a Hurry. A professor of English at Adelphi University, Cooley divides her time between Queens, New York, and Castiglione del Terziere, Italy. Her American cat, Zora, is named after one of the cities in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and their Italian cat, Tristana, is named after the medieval knight. |
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