The Elements: A Widowhood

by Kat Lister

Overview

What does it mean to become a widow at 35? In her mid-thirties Kat Lister lost her husband to brain cancer. After five years of being a wife and one of being a carer, in love and in and out of hospitals, she became a widow. In the year following his death Kat seeks refuge in stories of grief and widowhood, but struggles to find a language that can make sense of her experience and the physicality of bereavement. Instead, she turns to the elements - fire, water, earth, air - on her quest to come to terms with her grief, to inhabit her body again, and to find out who she is now. The Elements is a story of love, pain, hope and, ultimately, transformation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785787959
Publisher:	Amberley Publishing
Publication date:	09/01/2022
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	7.75(w) x 5.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Kat Lister is a writer and editor based in London. Beginning her career as a music journalist at the NME, she has gone on to write widely for publications including VICE, the Guardian, Marie Claire, Vogue and The Feminist Times, where she was appointed Contributing Editor. In 2017, she joined the editorial team at The Pool, becoming a freelance features and news editor until its demise in 2019. Since her husband's death in 2018, she has focused on investigating her experience of grief, writing widely circulated essays and features for the Sunday Times Magazine, Sunday Times Style and The Pool.

Editorial Reviews

"Striking honest" The Times

"[A] masterfully crafted exploration of what it means to lose the one you love, and one that holds the power to change those who read it. The author lays out her heartbreaking grief in poetic paragraphs that will stay with readers for days." — Booklist STARRED REVEIW

"Strikingly honest" Sarah Ditum, The Times

"A staggering book. Kat writes with such hypnotic lyricism." Terri White

"The must-read memoir. A moving, bruising and meditative memoir and love story ... Beautifully written, The Elements, will strike a chord with anyone who's been touched by grief." Sarra Manning, Red Magazine

"Powerful, humane and deeply affecting, Lister's wise and truthful writing makes this essential reading for anyone touched, and utterly confused, by grief." Sali Hughes

"It is not just one of the most beautiful books I've ever read, exploring grief through the elements of the cosmos, it is the only book I've read that has made me feel less alone. A must read even if it's not your own experience." Poorna Bell

"A stunning and immersive examination of grief; of making a new future; the body as a site of "wrongness" and "re-entry" after bereavement ... it veers from melancholy to rage and joy." Sinéad Gleeson

From the Publisher