The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide

by Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Anna-Leena Härkönen (Foreword)

"What happens to those of us shattered by the suicide of a loved one? Antonella Gambotto-Burke has given us a voice."
- from the foreword by author Anna-Leena Härkönen to the tenth anniversary edition

Writer Antonella Gambotto-Burke was awoken at seven one Saturday morning by a telephone call. She could never have anticipated the subsequent devastation.
The Eclipse is a harrowing account of one woman's experience of love and loss. Gambotto-Burke's insights are startling; her ability to make sense of suicide, revolutionary. Does any man have the right to dispose of his own life? This is, she writes, the ultimate debate of moral entitlement. She explains the premise of suicide and how it pivots on a fatal logical flaw. Arguing her case against our understanding of depression and bereavement, she poses a profound
If death is a process and not a state, how does that change the experience of grief?
Gambotto-Burke's life has been saturated by death. The first boy who proposed to her shot himself in the head at the age of sixteen. The man she was to marry, the notorious American editor of British GQ, overdosed and died convulsing in an ambulance at 38. And then her brother, gone.
Grief is, she writes, something like coals to be walked on.
The seminal work on surviving bereavement by suicide, The Eclipse is a tribute to love itself. "Because hope has its own biochemistry," Gambotto-Burke writes, "and it sustains."

Genres: Nonfiction, Death, Biography Memoir, Mental Health, Memoir

252 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

"If I close my eyes, I see femininity as an apple. Whole or halved, with a star at its heart concealing traces of a poison that, as it kills - and like a woman - can accelerate its target’s heartrate. I imagine the sound of that acceleration from within, listening as we all once listened, never thinking it would end, to the aria, charivari or lullaby of our mothers’ hearts."

- from APPLE: SEX, DRUGS, MOTHERHOOD AND THE RECOVERY OF THE FEMININE, by Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Links to podcasts, essays and reviews can be found on gambottoburke.com and instagram.com/gambottoburke

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not often that you read a book which makes you feel you have opened the door into someone else's mind. The stream of consciousness style, moves between memory and reflection, from psychology to mediumship without ever feeling that it has left thoughts unfinished or questions answered. The two men who chose to end their lives arise from the pages vivid and breathing, more so in fact than any others, save the author herself. This book was quite unlike anything that I have ever read.
While mine is not one of the '16,000 hearts (that) break every morning' because of a loved one's suicide, I have seen the effects on friends who have joined that number and these stories need to be told. This heartbreak shouldn't be compounded by loneliness and shame. And I still look twice at certain men I the street before realizing they are not the friend who ended his life in a similar manner to the author's brother.
Despite the white hot grief that runs through this book, it is written with electric clarity. Her insights mirror many of the conclusions I have reached about depression, suicide and myriad other things.
Most of all this book is deeply personal, reading it makes you feel you have shared a long, dark, intimate conversation with the author. Closing it leaves the strange sadness that comes with saying goodbye to a friend.

[Tori · Rating 3 out of 5]

20 - This book is a memoir about a woman who lost her brother to suicide. I have very mixed feelings about the book. The first 150 pages seem like a lot of namedropping, and I was having trouble relating to the author. However, the last 50 or so pages that deal with her grief over the loss of her brother really resonated with me. In particular, the comments from her friend Rita. The author succeeds in putting into words how grief makes it difficult to function, make decisions, makes you so easily overwhelmed, takes all your energy, etc. She distinguishes depression from loss. I like to read books by people who are making it through a major loss without medication, and she describes how she did that. Dispite my original dislike for the book, I found towards the end that it really made me stop and think a lot reading and rereading lines I particularly liked. My favorite quote from the book..."I began to understand that healing would not be facilitated by the denial or subjugation of grief, but by repeated exposure to beauty in all its forms."

[Hanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gambotton kiihoton ja elämänhaluinen "Pimennys" on hieno kirja vaikeasta aiheesta. Siinä tunteet ja kuvaukset eivät heittäydy hyökyaallon lailla päälle, mutta eivät jää kovin latistetuiksikaan. Kyyhkynen rimpuilee otteessa ennen vapautumistaan ja hauskan käänteen saanut uni helpottaa surua. Kaikesta tästä huolimatta "Pimennys" ei noussut minulle mitenkään erityisen suureksi kirjaksi, se ei säväyttänyt ja jäin pohtimaan syitä etenkin Gianlucan itsemurhan kohdalla.

"Pimennys: itsemurhamuistelmat" oli täysin pätevä, mutta ei vetänyt mukanaan.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would have enjoyed this book much more if Gambotto hadn't tried to be so analytical. Also she has an intensely irritating habit of name dropping through out the whole book and it's just pretentious.

[♡Piritta · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

[sanita erharde · Rating 3 out of 5]

man nepatīk beigas. kādēļ pēdējā laikā man krīt uz nerviem "beigas" visām grāmatām, ko lasu.? -.-