The Grief Of Others

Product Description

Is keeping a secret from a spouse always an act of infidelity? & what cost does such a secret exact on a family? The Ryries have suffered a loss: the death of a baby just fifty-seven hours after his birth. Without words to express their grief, the parents, John & Ricky, try to return to their previous lives. Struggling to regain a semblance of normalcy for themselves & for their two older children, they find themselves pretending not only that little has changed, but that their marriage, their family, have always been intact. Yet in the aftermath of the baby's death, long-suppressed uncertainties about their relationship come roiling to the surface. A dreadful secret emerges with reverberations that reach far into their past & threaten their future. The couple's children, ten-year-old Biscuit & thirteen-year-old Paul, responding to the unnamed tensions around them, begin to act out in exquisitely
- perhaps courageously
- idiosyncratic ways. But as the four family members scatter into private, isolating grief, an unexpected visitor arrives, & they all find themselves growing more alert to the sadness & burdens of others
- to the grief that is part of every human life but that also carries within it the power to draw us together. Moving, psychologically acute & gorgeously written, The Grief of Others asks how we balance personal autonomy with the intimacy of relationships, how we balance private decisions with the obligations of belonging to a family, & how we take measure of our own sorrows in a world rife with suffering. This novel shows how one family, by finally allowing itself to experience the shared quality of grief, is able to rekindle tenderness & hope.