Publishers Weekly
★ 01/13/2025
Pulitzer-winning novelist Brooks (Horse) delivers a moving and lyrical account of the years following her husband’s death. In 2019, Brooks’s 60-year-old husband, Tony Hurwitz, died of a heart attack. Three years later, Brooks spent several months on the secluded Flinders Island off the coast of Australia, finally “unclenching... the soul” and allowing herself to grieve. The narrative focuses mostly on the period between Tony’s death and that sojourn, cataloging the hectic months during which Brooks dealt with tax problems, a lack of health insurance, and a legal fight over her youngest son’s guardianship. Tender flashbacks recount the couple’s courtship at Columbia Journalism School in the 1980s, their travels across the globe as foreign correspondents, and their decision to settle in Massachusetts, start a family, and concentrate on writing books. Brooks concludes by imploring readers to spend time processing their trauma, crediting the experience with her resolution to make “the life I have as vivid and consequential as I can.” Brooks’s spare yet forceful prose and admirable determination to stare pain in the face go a long way toward achieving that goal. Readers reckoning with the loss of a loved one will find wisdom in these pages. Agent: Kristine Dahl, CAA. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
Brooks and her husband, Tony Horwitz, had been reporters in war zones, but nothing prepared her for his sudden death, at just 60, after three decades together. Four years later, she journeyed to a remote island near Tasmania “to do the unfinished work of grieving.” This memoir is her report back, at once a spare accounting of tragic detail and an appreciation of the healing properties of solitude.” —New York Times Book Review
“This intimate memoir of grief is a lifeline to others dealing with loss. ... Intensely intimate and candid ... Brooks tracks the geography of grief with patience and grace as she comes to terms with the ongoing nature of outliving the ones you love most. ... Her memoir is certainly a testament to her own unique loss, but it’s moreover a lifeline to others who will find themselves in this familiar, shattered landscape of grief.” —Los Angeles Times
“Brooks wield[s] precise and often beautiful language and, in the most graceful way possible, point[s] a way forward. A rich account of marriage and mourning ... Memorial Days contains much compassionate advice for those who have, or will, suffer the same ferocious blow.” —Washington Post
“Memorial Days joins Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart as memoirs of grief worth seeking out. ... Memorial Days gives due justice to what it means to live and love and experience loss.” —Chicago Tribune
“The grace Brooks offered herself with this time alone is offered to the reader all through the book; Memorial Days will surely join the other classics delivered to new widows by their literary friends.” —Boston Globe
“A powerful, slender book packed with quotable observations ... Memorial Days masterfully reveals Brooks as both reporter and fiction writer, marshaling facts and details while probing the ever-motivating miracles of love and loss.” —Star Tribune
“There is no single set of instructions on how to cope with grief. But a gifted writer, sharing her own story, can offer a path out of darkness toward reflection and peace.” —Christian Science Monitor
“With exquisite writing, the book is a gorgeous love letter to her husband, Tony Horwitz. ... We marvel at Brooks’ skill in crafting powerful prose with a visceral impact. ... Brooks gives us an enormous gift, generously sharing her intensely personal journey, which will touch many souls.” —Martha's Vineyard Times
“This poignant book on grief ultimately teaches gladness. ... A spectacular ode to grieving and an elegant homage to marriage. ... A masterpiece.” —Washington Independent Review of Books
“Brooks, with arresting precision, sensitivity, and candor, takes deep soundings of her grief and evolving perceptions and feelings in a generous and resonant remembrance. ... Brooks’ many fans will want to learn more about her, while ardent memoir readers and those looking for books about grief will also reach for Memorial Days.” —Booklist (starred review)
“[M]oving and lyrical … readers reckoning with the loss of a loved one will find wisdom in these pages.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A graceful and moving meditation on bereavement.” —Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
2024-11-09
Finding an island for grief.
On Memorial Day, 2019, Tony Horwitz, Brooks’ 60-year-old husband, collapsed on a street in Washington, D.C., and died. In the days and months that followed, Brooks found herself hiding behind a “heavy and elaborate” facade, “a fugitive from my own feelings.” Finally, in February 2023, she traveled to a remote island off the coast of her native Australia to allow herself to mourn. In alternating chapters, Brooks creates an absorbing memoir of shocking loss and protracted grief as she reflects on her marriage, her driven, Type A husband, and her future alone. She and Horwitz met at a party when they were graduate students at Columbia Journalism School. A bit shy, she couldn’t help but notice the “tanned, tousle-haired blond in overalls and red sneakers, regaling the small group on the balcony with the woes of living with his brother in Alphabet City,” a rough section of Manhattan. They both went on to successful careers as journalists, including working as foreign correspondents with posts in Cairo, London, and Sydney, where she had hoped they would settle as a family. But Horwitz needed to be in the U.S., preferably within walking distance to a newsstand and coffee shop. After their son was born, when she no longer wanted to go on risky assignments, he encouraged her to try to write fiction. She was in the middle of her novelHorse when he died. Brooks pays homage to the loving, gregarious Horwitz, lashes out at America’s flawed medical system, and deftly conveys the ongoing reverberations of her shattering experience. Like other widowed writers (Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates), Brooks both relives the trauma of her husband’s death and keeps his cherished memory alive.
A graceful and moving meditation on bereavement.