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What Lasts
"Mary Mandeville’s gorgeous, raw truth-telling will crack your heart and stitch it up again. WHAT LASTS is a beautiful collection of essays that build on each other, that climb higher—much like her son Brandon climbed trees—to kiss the sky, to remind us what makes us human, to remind us devastating loss squashes us and can also open us to beauty. In these nine essays we learn Mandeville’s son died by suicide. We learn how she navigated grief, how she came to fully embrace she’s still alive and living out loud to honor her son, to honor herself. For anyone who’s had a loss (and isn’t that everyone?) WHAT LASTS is essential heart reading."
— Anne Gudger, author of THE FIFTH CHAMBER
"Between love and loss over the span of a life there are small moments of epic emotion. Mary Mandeville scoops up these tiny pieces of life force, love force, and arranges them like a profound poem you might find washed up on the sand, or reaching into the sky like mighty tree branches. This book is a love song and a heart prayer. I will carry the pieces in my body forever, with deep gratitude."
— Lidia Yuknavitch, author of THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER
"In WHAT LASTS, A Narrative Reliquary, Mary Mandeville offers readers a delicate, exquisitely rendered glimpse of her heart, where memory, tenderness, and motherhood swirl in gorgeous, aching combinations. Mandeville writes with a poet's precision, navigating the intimate terrain of loving, healing, losing, letting go, and witnessing. Line after line, Mandeville exhibits her singular blend of wisdom, warmth, and humanity. WHAT LASTS touched the deepest parts of me—both healed and unhealed—and I'm grateful Mandeville offers her light to all of us through these beautiful pages."
— Christie Tate, author of NYT bestseller GROUP: HOW ONE THERAPIST AND A CIRCLE OF STRANGERS SAVED MY LIFE
— Anne Gudger, author of THE FIFTH CHAMBER
"Between love and loss over the span of a life there are small moments of epic emotion. Mary Mandeville scoops up these tiny pieces of life force, love force, and arranges them like a profound poem you might find washed up on the sand, or reaching into the sky like mighty tree branches. This book is a love song and a heart prayer. I will carry the pieces in my body forever, with deep gratitude."
— Lidia Yuknavitch, author of THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER
"In WHAT LASTS, A Narrative Reliquary, Mary Mandeville offers readers a delicate, exquisitely rendered glimpse of her heart, where memory, tenderness, and motherhood swirl in gorgeous, aching combinations. Mandeville writes with a poet's precision, navigating the intimate terrain of loving, healing, losing, letting go, and witnessing. Line after line, Mandeville exhibits her singular blend of wisdom, warmth, and humanity. WHAT LASTS touched the deepest parts of me—both healed and unhealed—and I'm grateful Mandeville offers her light to all of us through these beautiful pages."
— Christie Tate, author of NYT bestseller GROUP: HOW ONE THERAPIST AND A CIRCLE OF STRANGERS SAVED MY LIFE
58 pages, Paperback
Published January 19, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 11, 2024
What Lasts is a gorgeous chapbook that shares part of Mary's experience as a parent who loses a son to suicide. Mary's writing is beautifully steeped in both the body and the natural world, both of which add so much depth and emotion to her story. Her writing is fierce, unflinching, direct, and also brimming with compassion for herself and her son. This is an important, necessary book and I'm so excited it's in the world so I can share it far and wide so people who need it can find it.
January 17, 2024
Note: Thank you Wrong Publishing for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
4.5/5
How could I describe Mary Mandeville’s essay collection, What Lasts, as anything other than breathless? This collection centers on a mother losing of her son to suicide, a mother who finds deep joy in running, hiking, and biking, all to breathe and feel the force of air in her lungs. This is a mother who craves breath, while her son deliberately stopped his own. Therefore, this collection is a difficult read due to its many serious subjects, and I recommend readers to consider the content warnings before picking up this book. With that in mind, I highly recommend this chapbook. I’ve finished What Lasts several days ago, and I’m still thinking about it.
Of course, while we are introduced to Mary as a mother who lost her son, we also learn many other aspects of her identity. Through the collection’s tight structure and strong characterization, we discover Mary is a loving wife, a dog-mom, a rectal cancer survivor, an exercise lover, a writer, and so much more. Through these essays, both Mary and her son B become fully fleshed-out human beings, making the essays all the more impactful and memorable.
These characters—or rather people—also feel so real to us due to the language’s lyricism. In the collection, Mary mentions her experience with writing and critique groups, and those experiences are clearly present in her work. For example, Mary beautifully captures the power nature holds over her with the following lines: “In the call osprey or the dance of sunlight on the leaves of the gray-trunked black cottonwoods that reach high into the blue sky, in the long broad view across the Columbia as it flows to the ocean, I found something I’d been searching for since I was a girl. I still don’t exactly know; maybe it’s God” (9-10). I nearly highlighted the entire book because of this exceptional language.
While both Mary and B were developed, I couldn’t help but wonder about the others who inhabited her life, including her wife and other child. While we see snippets of them, I was still left curious about who they were as individuals by the end of the piece. Nevertheless, I understand that this collection as a love letter to her son B, a beautiful, brave, breathless letter that truly demonstrates what unconditional love truly is.
4.5/5
How could I describe Mary Mandeville’s essay collection, What Lasts, as anything other than breathless? This collection centers on a mother losing of her son to suicide, a mother who finds deep joy in running, hiking, and biking, all to breathe and feel the force of air in her lungs. This is a mother who craves breath, while her son deliberately stopped his own. Therefore, this collection is a difficult read due to its many serious subjects, and I recommend readers to consider the content warnings before picking up this book. With that in mind, I highly recommend this chapbook. I’ve finished What Lasts several days ago, and I’m still thinking about it.
Of course, while we are introduced to Mary as a mother who lost her son, we also learn many other aspects of her identity. Through the collection’s tight structure and strong characterization, we discover Mary is a loving wife, a dog-mom, a rectal cancer survivor, an exercise lover, a writer, and so much more. Through these essays, both Mary and her son B become fully fleshed-out human beings, making the essays all the more impactful and memorable.
These characters—or rather people—also feel so real to us due to the language’s lyricism. In the collection, Mary mentions her experience with writing and critique groups, and those experiences are clearly present in her work. For example, Mary beautifully captures the power nature holds over her with the following lines: “In the call osprey or the dance of sunlight on the leaves of the gray-trunked black cottonwoods that reach high into the blue sky, in the long broad view across the Columbia as it flows to the ocean, I found something I’d been searching for since I was a girl. I still don’t exactly know; maybe it’s God” (9-10). I nearly highlighted the entire book because of this exceptional language.
While both Mary and B were developed, I couldn’t help but wonder about the others who inhabited her life, including her wife and other child. While we see snippets of them, I was still left curious about who they were as individuals by the end of the piece. Nevertheless, I understand that this collection as a love letter to her son B, a beautiful, brave, breathless letter that truly demonstrates what unconditional love truly is.
February 16, 2024
Mary Mandeville is a weaver of thoughts, emotions, and experiences. She tells in stories and reflections how her life and her son's life are forever woven together in life and in death. She weaves together images of breath and nature as she takes the reader on a fragile journey of healing, walking a tightrope between dark thoughts and little glimpses of hope and even joy.
I read What Lasts over a period of 2 weeks, one chapter at a time. Mary reminds us that tragic death of a loved one leaves behind so many unanswered questions and so much self-doubt. Each chapter stayed with me, the words and emotions woven together in my head and heart.
I came away with a deep feeling of Gratitude for the gift of this little book that so beautifully describes love and loss, grief and healing as a messy, hard, loving human experience.
I read What Lasts over a period of 2 weeks, one chapter at a time. Mary reminds us that tragic death of a loved one leaves behind so many unanswered questions and so much self-doubt. Each chapter stayed with me, the words and emotions woven together in my head and heart.
I came away with a deep feeling of Gratitude for the gift of this little book that so beautifully describes love and loss, grief and healing as a messy, hard, loving human experience.
March 31, 2024
"What Lasts, a Narrative Reliquary" by Mary Mandeville is a small but mighty book comprised of words tenderly woven from her heart. Mary has known sorrow like few have had to bear in losing a child to suicide. When she weaves these heartfelt threaded words for us, she lets us into a kind of human space within her that holds this love and loss that she carries. Mandeville uses words so eloquently and gently that it comes close to betraying the deep shock of the subject matter and she does this without deceiving the obvious impact of such a cataclysmic and shocking loss. In this way our hearts are opened in a new way to our own sadness so we can sit with her. I highly recommend this book for its compassion and grace as an inspiration.
March 7, 2024
Thank you to Wrong Publishing for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
As other reviewers have noted, WHAT LASTS is stunning - a challenging read, for sure, but one worth confronting. With precise, poetic prose (in addition to a couple actual poems interspersed between the essays), Mandeville manages to grieve the loss of her son while finding space for continued love and growth. I finished the last essay feeling both heartbroken and inspired by the connection Mandeville draws between grief, memory, and language. Anyone who has turned to writing as a form of catharsis and healing will find a kindred spirit here.
As other reviewers have noted, WHAT LASTS is stunning - a challenging read, for sure, but one worth confronting. With precise, poetic prose (in addition to a couple actual poems interspersed between the essays), Mandeville manages to grieve the loss of her son while finding space for continued love and growth. I finished the last essay feeling both heartbroken and inspired by the connection Mandeville draws between grief, memory, and language. Anyone who has turned to writing as a form of catharsis and healing will find a kindred spirit here.
February 10, 2024
This book is stunning. Mary is a master of her craft, drawing us in with images and sentences that connect us deeply to her, her story, ourselves and our humanness. This book is heart wrenching and breathtaking. The reader is taken along with her through her laughter, grief, frustration, fear, confusion, all of it. She invites them in, like Rumi recommends in his poem Guest House, and invites us to sit with them too. The way she anchors her work in nature and the body is grounding and beautiful. This is a must read.
February 19, 2024
What Lasts is stunning. Beautifully written, it is a moving, heart wrenching testament to what does indeed last: Love, especially a mother’s love. Mary explores grief, specifically the abyss of losing a child to suicide. Her tone is kind, loving, honest and trustworthy, which is very important to me as the reader; her masterful writing guided me through the best and the worst moments with sublimity and awe, leaving me with the potent, uplifting transcendence of love in spite of death. A wonderful book.
March 4, 2024
Mary Mandeville's book, "What Lasts, a narrative reliquary" leads the reader on a tender yet honest journey of losses. Losses that linger in a family's breath long after a beloved has left their body. Mary is unflinching in sharing her story...especially the raw emotions around her son's suicide. Throughout this short narrative love and respect is woven between each word. Mary breaths life into her writing. It sustains the reader as we come alongside her during these difficult times in her life.
February 9, 2024
Mary Mandeville writes with heart and a poet's sensitivity. In this gorgeous collection of essays Mandeville shows us how devastating loss can both squash us and open us to beauty. We learn Mandeville’s 19-year-old son died by suicide. We learn how she navigated grief, how she came to fully embrace she’s still alive and living out loud to honor her son, to honor herself. Why? Because she can. For anyone who’s had a loss (and isn’t that everyone?) What Lasts is essential heart reading.
March 13, 2024
This beautiful collection of narrative prose, poetry, and braided essays by Mary Mandeville is a sacred shrine to her late son. In fifty short pages Mandeville shares the enduring love of a mother’s heart, from moments of life with her boy to how that heart of hers kept beating after losing him. This book is a treasure. I keep my copy close by as a reminder of love: the one life essential that, indeed, does last.
February 11, 2024
A beautiful collection of heartbreaking essays that nonetheless left me feeling buoyed by the love that infuses it.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews