I wrote this review a while ago, but it obviously did not stay. I enjoyed this book to an extent, but it is very heart-wrenching. It will make you cry from the beginning through the end. It really is not a feel-good book because it delves so deeply into the reader's mortality and guilt that only those who have been through what the author is talking about can really understand. O'Rourke's writing is very engaging, and in that respect the book is masterful and a delight. The subject matter is best left for those who need understanding (or to show understanding) in the wake of tragedy.
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The Long Goodbye is one of the best books I have read this year. It was moving and at times brought me to tears.

After reading Meghan O'Rourke's book of poetry, Sun in Days, I wanted to find out more about the author and wound up on her Wikipedia page and eventually on the author's own page. I don't actively seek out books about grief and mourning...my mother died in 2013 and the moving on part for me came about 9 months down the road but I still look back at the guilt and sadness I had at the time and have wanted to try to understand it better.

Meghan O'Rourke's relationship with her mother was far different from my relationship with mine. I can't help but wonder that one's grief is shaped by the prior relationship with the deceased. I know that to a large degree, I saw my mother as a figure I was unable to say no to and who manipulated my life even into my adult years. There is too much backstory to be able to explain in depth all that I felt toward my mother in her declining years of diabetes and eventual move into an assisted living facility but suffice to say, our relationship was strained. She was prone to circular arguments, had the possible beginnings of dementia and, my sisters and I believe, had undiagnosed narcissism that made her a challenge to enjoy being around.

O'Rourke's writing has a narrative voice that is immediately appealing to me despite the subject matter. I wanted to read the book in the evening when I came home even though, at times, it left me thinking about my own mourning experience and feeling rather down.

Can it be that what O'Rourke went through was a more "normal" or healthier experience than what I went through? I just remember feeling profoundly guilty about my mother's last few years and my relationship with her whereas O'Rourke's loss is more deeply felt and reflects a more profound connection between two people.

I really want to go back now and read many of the poems in O'Rourke's Sun in Days because I realize now that many of them were about her grief or tidbits from her young life with her parents. I also will actively seek to own Meghan O'Rourke's books rather than just getting them from the library. ( )

I almost didn't finish this book. Multiple times. I had at least one anxiety attack in the middle of it. It's taken me almost two weeks to get to the end. It's one of the most painful books I've ever read, unvarnished sorrow, alarming in how realistic it seemed. I picked it up after my dog died but as I was coming out of my grief, I fell into Meghan O'Rourke's -- a ravaging, fierce grief that, while very specific, also spoke to the universality of the awful experience of losing someone close.

I found the first half of the book almost unreadable. Not because of the writing, which was exquisite and delicate and vociferously sincere, but because the experience of watching your mother die slowly felt so excruciating. At one point, toward the end of her mother's life, faced with the inevitability of my own looming demise, I had to put the book down for a few days and think about what I'm doing with my life. The second half, too, was harrowing -- the author felt her mother's absence so sharply, and there was no way for her to overcome the pain.

I loved how, after her mother's death, O'Rourke starts recovering and seeing the world in a new light. To me, it seemed like she saw everything in a new color, everything weighted down by its mortality but also freed of another kind of weight. The beautiful excerpts of other people's experiences of grief were powerful, too. I should re-read this book one day in a slower, more careful manner to fully comprehend O'Rourke's pain. ( )

3.5 stars Meghan O'Rourke is a poet and that is evident in her prose as well. A memoir about her mother's illness and death, this book vacillates between deeply personal and somewhat clinical as she strives to make sense of her loss. Her mother was only 55 -- it was a fast-moving invasive cancer. Meghan is in her early 30s and the book is written only about 18 mos. after the event, so feelings are rather raw, but very authentic. She doesn't try to sugar coat things or make herself or her family look ideal -- she has regrets and she is admittedly self-centered at times. In trying to understand her deep sorrow and her visceral response to it, she has read widely and distills those other works nicely with key quotes and explanations "believing in some primitive part of my brain that if I read them all, if I learn everything there is to know, I'll solve the problem." (290) "Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily" she quotes La Rochefoucauld, but only by facing it head-on is she able to make any headway. She also examines, briefly our American culture's fear of death and the rituals we have lost in encountering it, especially for those who have no faith tradition. She misses a public ability to mourn and to have her mourning recognized. This is a book that speaks to the uniqueness of grief to each individual and each situation, despite common threads and trends. I appreciate her beautiful writing and the sentiments she expresses, but it felt a little self-indulgent at times and therefore hard to relate to, but thankfully, I have not lost a mother. (a condition for which there is no word, she notes). There is a helpful index in the back of some of her thorough reading, which is a benefit. Reading this book was a witness to catharsis. ( )

beautifully written, poignant account of one woman's grief following the death of her mother. It is extensively researched, honest and although it outlines deeply personal experiences, it is written with a real sense of ingegrity and there is no sense of exploitation of the writer's painful situation. ( )