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Fi
"A truly extraordinary memoir about a mother's loss of her beautiful, fearless, raw and an utterly compelling read." -- Helen Macdonald, author of H Is For Hawk "Fair to say, I was in a ribald state the summer before my fiftieth birthday." And so begins Alexandra Fuller's open, vivid new memoir, Fi . It's midsummer in Wyoming and Alexandra is barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe, reeling from a midlife breakup, freshly sober and piecing her way uncertainly through a volatile new relationship with a younger woman, Alexandra vows to get herself back on even keel.
And then - suddenly and incomprehensibly - her son Fi, at 21 years old, dies in his sleep.
No stranger to loss - young siblings, a parent, a home country - Alexandra is nonetheless leveled. At the same time, she is painfully aware that she cannot succumb and abandon her two surviving daughters as her mother before her had done. From a sheep wagon deep in the mountains of Wyoming to a grief sanctuary in New Mexico to a silent meditation retreat in Alberta, Canada, Alexandra journeys up and down the spine of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to find how to grieve herself whole. There is no answer, and there are countless answers - in poetry, in rituals and routines, in nature and in the indigenous wisdom she absorbed as a child in Zimbabwe. By turns disarming, devastating and unexpectedly, blessedly funny, Alexandra recounts the wild medicine of painstakingly grieving a child in a culture that has no instructions for it.
And then - suddenly and incomprehensibly - her son Fi, at 21 years old, dies in his sleep.
No stranger to loss - young siblings, a parent, a home country - Alexandra is nonetheless leveled. At the same time, she is painfully aware that she cannot succumb and abandon her two surviving daughters as her mother before her had done. From a sheep wagon deep in the mountains of Wyoming to a grief sanctuary in New Mexico to a silent meditation retreat in Alberta, Canada, Alexandra journeys up and down the spine of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to find how to grieve herself whole. There is no answer, and there are countless answers - in poetry, in rituals and routines, in nature and in the indigenous wisdom she absorbed as a child in Zimbabwe. By turns disarming, devastating and unexpectedly, blessedly funny, Alexandra recounts the wild medicine of painstakingly grieving a child in a culture that has no instructions for it.
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First published April 9, 2024
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About the author
Alexandra Fuller
15 books1,143 followersAlexandra Fuller has written five books of non-fiction.
Her debut book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (Random House, 2001), was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002, the 2002 Booksense best non-fiction book, a finalist for the Guardian’s First Book Award and the winner of the 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.
Her 2004 Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier (Penguin Press) won the Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage.
The Legend of Colton H Bryant was published in May, 2008 by Penguin Press and was a Toronto Globe and Mail, Best Non-Fiction Book of 2008.
Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness was published in August 2011 (Penguin Press).
Her latest book, Leaving Before the Rains Come, was published in January 2015 (Penguin Press).
Fuller has also written extensively for magazines and newspapers including the New Yorker Magazine, National Geographic Magazine, Vogue and Granta Magazine. Her reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review; The Financial Times and the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Fuller was born in England in 1969 and moved to Africa with her family when she was two. She married an American river guide in Zambia in 1993. They left Africa in 1994 and moved to Wyoming, where Fuller still resides. She has three children.
Her debut book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (Random House, 2001), was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002, the 2002 Booksense best non-fiction book, a finalist for the Guardian’s First Book Award and the winner of the 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.
Her 2004 Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier (Penguin Press) won the Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage.
The Legend of Colton H Bryant was published in May, 2008 by Penguin Press and was a Toronto Globe and Mail, Best Non-Fiction Book of 2008.
Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness was published in August 2011 (Penguin Press).
Her latest book, Leaving Before the Rains Come, was published in January 2015 (Penguin Press).
Fuller has also written extensively for magazines and newspapers including the New Yorker Magazine, National Geographic Magazine, Vogue and Granta Magazine. Her reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review; The Financial Times and the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Fuller was born in England in 1969 and moved to Africa with her family when she was two. She married an American river guide in Zambia in 1993. They left Africa in 1994 and moved to Wyoming, where Fuller still resides. She has three children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 262 reviews
April 2, 2024
All parents who hear of Fi's death have told me this: I wouldn't survive the death of my child, as if my child's death must therefore have been a lesser death than the death of their child would be. Or me, as if I must be a less grief-stricken parent than they would be, if it happened to them. I tell them that I didn't survive and also that I did. Both things happened. (loc. 1358*)
Alexandra Fuller was still grieving the loss of her father when the unthinkable happened—her son Fi died suddenly, unexpectedly, still in the prime of his youth. And Fuller came undone, because what else can you do when that happens?
This is a grief memoir—full stop. Fuller is a hell of a writer, which is not news. Here she spills herself broken onto the page: questioning how she can possibly be expected to survive, pulling from book after book and writer after writer to articulate the depths of her loss and apply balm to her soul. She takes to the mountains and the sky, to the ocean and a grief retreat and a meditation retreat, not in some sort of targeted quest but because the only thing she can do is give her life over to grief, and to find new rhythms for it.
It's worse in town, in the condo, my restlessness, my panic. Only the wild—even the scorched, diminished, smoke-hazed wild—seems conducive to my unwieldy grief. Grand enough to be the grief, to soak up the grief, to reflect it back at me, my feelings as thunder, wind, wildfire. In the mountains, I'd understood the warp and weft of my grief; I'd accepted its weather. In the mountains my grief was shouted back at me with praise and with majesty, in the oldest, most sovereign sense of that word. (loc. 1628)
I have not read Travel Light, Move Fast, Fuller's memoir about her father's death, but Fi died when she was partway through writing it, and there's no way on earth that that didn't reset the shape of that book. Someday I'll pick that up too, because I'm curious about how they overlap and how they don't, and also because I don't think it's possible for Fuller to write a book that is anything other than dramatic and sharp and so vivid it hurts.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.
*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.
Alexandra Fuller was still grieving the loss of her father when the unthinkable happened—her son Fi died suddenly, unexpectedly, still in the prime of his youth. And Fuller came undone, because what else can you do when that happens?
This is a grief memoir—full stop. Fuller is a hell of a writer, which is not news. Here she spills herself broken onto the page: questioning how she can possibly be expected to survive, pulling from book after book and writer after writer to articulate the depths of her loss and apply balm to her soul. She takes to the mountains and the sky, to the ocean and a grief retreat and a meditation retreat, not in some sort of targeted quest but because the only thing she can do is give her life over to grief, and to find new rhythms for it.
It's worse in town, in the condo, my restlessness, my panic. Only the wild—even the scorched, diminished, smoke-hazed wild—seems conducive to my unwieldy grief. Grand enough to be the grief, to soak up the grief, to reflect it back at me, my feelings as thunder, wind, wildfire. In the mountains, I'd understood the warp and weft of my grief; I'd accepted its weather. In the mountains my grief was shouted back at me with praise and with majesty, in the oldest, most sovereign sense of that word. (loc. 1628)
I have not read Travel Light, Move Fast, Fuller's memoir about her father's death, but Fi died when she was partway through writing it, and there's no way on earth that that didn't reset the shape of that book. Someday I'll pick that up too, because I'm curious about how they overlap and how they don't, and also because I don't think it's possible for Fuller to write a book that is anything other than dramatic and sharp and so vivid it hurts.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.
*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.
April 27, 2024
“Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy”. This memoir of her son, and of the process of dealing with her grief at his death, is one of the best observations of grief I have read. As one would well understand, Ms. Fuller was completely shattered when her son died suddenly of a seizure, in his sleep. He had had one previous seizure episode, relatively minor in nature, but serious enough to be checked by a doctor, who found no cause for the event, and saw no reason to be concerned for Fi's future health.
As she describes it, the family of her two daughters, herself, and Fi were exceptionally close, and Fi was an outstanding person in every way, a leader, an athlete, a scholar, a compassionate young man, and this of course made his death even harder to take. Alexandra’s first response to the news was literally to want to die. Only the knowledge that her daughters needed her moderated the intense desire to drop dead, but she was non-functioning, shattered, and abed for weeks. Then gradually, with help from friends, over a period of months, she moved back toward the land of the living, and became functional again, but she was not healed, she was not well. Her daughters were, if not as distraught as she was, then at least depressed; Fi had been their beloved brother and friend, and just as Ms. Fuller could not conceive of a future without Fi, neither could they.
Fuller moved to a yurt in a meadow to be closer to nature, and she found this helped her bear the pain of loss much better than her previous existence in a condominium apartment. Having grown up living an out-of-doors life in Africa, it makes sense that nature would be a healing force for her. It certainly is for me. Finally, a friend who owned a house in Hawaii convinced her to go there and live for a month with her daughters and her former girlfriend, and that month finally brought her and her daughters sufficiently out of mourning, that they finally, for the first time since Fi’s death, laughed.
I cannot fathom how bad it must be to lose a child, it simply beggars the imagination of any parent. And yet as Ms. Fuller points out, from our earliest existence, parents have lost children. Just as I have never stopped missing my father, Alexandra Fuller will never stop mourning her son, but she explains how she arrived at a point where she could live with grief, and yet not be its slave.
As she describes it, the family of her two daughters, herself, and Fi were exceptionally close, and Fi was an outstanding person in every way, a leader, an athlete, a scholar, a compassionate young man, and this of course made his death even harder to take. Alexandra’s first response to the news was literally to want to die. Only the knowledge that her daughters needed her moderated the intense desire to drop dead, but she was non-functioning, shattered, and abed for weeks. Then gradually, with help from friends, over a period of months, she moved back toward the land of the living, and became functional again, but she was not healed, she was not well. Her daughters were, if not as distraught as she was, then at least depressed; Fi had been their beloved brother and friend, and just as Ms. Fuller could not conceive of a future without Fi, neither could they.
Fuller moved to a yurt in a meadow to be closer to nature, and she found this helped her bear the pain of loss much better than her previous existence in a condominium apartment. Having grown up living an out-of-doors life in Africa, it makes sense that nature would be a healing force for her. It certainly is for me. Finally, a friend who owned a house in Hawaii convinced her to go there and live for a month with her daughters and her former girlfriend, and that month finally brought her and her daughters sufficiently out of mourning, that they finally, for the first time since Fi’s death, laughed.
I cannot fathom how bad it must be to lose a child, it simply beggars the imagination of any parent. And yet as Ms. Fuller points out, from our earliest existence, parents have lost children. Just as I have never stopped missing my father, Alexandra Fuller will never stop mourning her son, but she explains how she arrived at a point where she could live with grief, and yet not be its slave.
January 2, 2025
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood will always be one of my favourite memoirs. Fi, the author's latest release reminds me why this is. Alexandra Fuller's writing is raw, intense, poetic, brave and unexpectedly funny even when dealing with the unexpected death of her twenty-one-year-old son. I don't think I've read another biography where the author is so brutally honest about who they are - showing the good, the bad and the ugly.
"...to accept the death of a loved one is to arrive at the knowledge that love itself cannot die or change or end."
August 19, 2024
I often given memoirs 5 stars as I believe a memoir is personal and should be respected as someone's story. That said this is a great piece of writing as well as a great memoir.
I've read a lot of Fuller's writing beginning with Don't Let's Go To the Dogs Tonight and continuing with her books that give us a glimpse of her life in Africa and Wyoming. I've always found not only great story telling but profound words as well. Yet I was a little hesitant to pick up this latest book about the death of her son just a few years ago. Certainly the scariest thing to think or read about for a parent is the death of a child. I was not sure I wanted to read over 200 pages of how a mother weathered this devastation. After just a few pages I knew it would be a special book about living, finding a way through difficult times and learning.
I especially liked several of the passages about walking, they spoke to me as I am a consummate walker.
"If I follow any religion it's walking. The daily practice of which brings me to a fresh understanding of God."
Fuller uses physical activity and the great outdoors to deal and work through her profound grief. She imparts her own wisdom learned and quotes frequently from others.
"What saves a man is to take a step. Than another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it." Antonine de Saint-Exupery."
I've read a lot of Fuller's writing beginning with Don't Let's Go To the Dogs Tonight and continuing with her books that give us a glimpse of her life in Africa and Wyoming. I've always found not only great story telling but profound words as well. Yet I was a little hesitant to pick up this latest book about the death of her son just a few years ago. Certainly the scariest thing to think or read about for a parent is the death of a child. I was not sure I wanted to read over 200 pages of how a mother weathered this devastation. After just a few pages I knew it would be a special book about living, finding a way through difficult times and learning.
I especially liked several of the passages about walking, they spoke to me as I am a consummate walker.
"If I follow any religion it's walking. The daily practice of which brings me to a fresh understanding of God."
Fuller uses physical activity and the great outdoors to deal and work through her profound grief. She imparts her own wisdom learned and quotes frequently from others.
"What saves a man is to take a step. Than another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it." Antonine de Saint-Exupery."
May 4, 2024
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by this author is probably one of my top five memoirs of all time and my favorite writing by this author. But I found myself skim-reading Fi. Though there were tender reflections on her playful and strong philosophy of parenting, deep friendships, clever writing, and heartbreaking journey the book is (understandably) hyper-focused on the grief of losing her son as a young adult. Weaves in her childhood in South Africa and all the people and rituals that got her through the first months and year…but also kind of incoherent and almost microscopically specific details…
March 23, 2024
There is no word for a person who has lost a child, even one fully grown to adulthood. They are still your child. There is the term widow, widower, but no term exists in English for that reversal of nature when a parent outlives a child. Grief takes over, and the memory of that person who a parent has known since before birth haunt and flood, and all aspects of that person recur. When Alexandra Fuller's son, aged 21, dies in his sleep, she and the entire family is encompassed by grief. Gifted with a poet's soul, she adds to her memoirs with this depiction of that grief, shattering and redemptive at the same time.
June 4, 2024
This book took some getting into. Like rappelling into her grief that is so familiar and yet still so individualized. I might write a better review but for now, five big stars and gratitude is all I got.
October 21, 2024
I couldn’t get over how she treated Till throughout. Like less than a full human.
August 18, 2024
Of course, my heart is going to go out endlessly to a mother's unimaginable loss of a child and there is no right or wrong way for anyone to grieve, but as others commented, not only was it rambling, but ramblings were snippets of fairly appropriated content. I find it quite rich that many references were of indigenous Americans, meanwhile, Fuller fam is very tied up in the real estate business, owning or selling multiple properties on sacred land. My not so humble opinion is that that area has been completely desecrated by that trade. Generations of colonizers continue...
Also ironic in quoting Chögyam Trungpa who famously wrote and spoke about “spiritual materialism”, which I found the book to be full of, seemingly cutting and pasting snippets of whatever practice fit the current mood. Which may be Fuller's point of no cultural blueprint of how to grieve. But I couldn't get past not the clearly privileged life, but more so, that she seems to believe she is not of that ilk. Can’t identify if it’s cluelessness, narcissism, detachment, but it was quite striking and incredibly off-putting - literally recommending that anyone who is grieving should take a few months off work and go to Hawaii (another colonized land). Maybe I’m bitter because I recently struggled just to pay for travel to my father's funeral let alone other expenses and income lost, which, of course, is what one does and wants to do, but this book seems like a victim of serious J Hole derangement syndrome and incredible lack of perspective on economic disparity, which one would think Fuller appreciated in Africa and in reality. Pity it doesn't translate here.
I did appreciate that Fuller was blessed with such a caring, well-off community who supported her throughout this horrific time. Ultimately Fi sounded like a remarkable, lovely boy, and I truly hope his soul rests and soars in peace and wonder.
Also ironic in quoting Chögyam Trungpa who famously wrote and spoke about “spiritual materialism”, which I found the book to be full of, seemingly cutting and pasting snippets of whatever practice fit the current mood. Which may be Fuller's point of no cultural blueprint of how to grieve. But I couldn't get past not the clearly privileged life, but more so, that she seems to believe she is not of that ilk. Can’t identify if it’s cluelessness, narcissism, detachment, but it was quite striking and incredibly off-putting - literally recommending that anyone who is grieving should take a few months off work and go to Hawaii (another colonized land). Maybe I’m bitter because I recently struggled just to pay for travel to my father's funeral let alone other expenses and income lost, which, of course, is what one does and wants to do, but this book seems like a victim of serious J Hole derangement syndrome and incredible lack of perspective on economic disparity, which one would think Fuller appreciated in Africa and in reality. Pity it doesn't translate here.
I did appreciate that Fuller was blessed with such a caring, well-off community who supported her throughout this horrific time. Ultimately Fi sounded like a remarkable, lovely boy, and I truly hope his soul rests and soars in peace and wonder.
September 15, 2024
achingly beautiful. lyrical. poetic.
Read
October 20, 2024I can't rate a book about a parent's grief after the death of a child. I read books about others' experience in part because I wish I could write about our son's death (almost two years ago). But I don't seem to have the words. I've learned, however, that each person's story of grief is unique. And that there is no timeline by which grief can be measured. Grief becomes part of the fabric of life, which most people can't see.
May 31, 2024
Another outstanding and rare offering from one of the most underappreciated writers of our time. Not enjoyable in the way her other work is "enjoyable", for obvious reasons; instead, we're served a double-helping of wisdom. Death & grief at death are so anathema in modern American culture reading a book like this feels like a radical act. Writing it certainly was.
July 12, 2024
Was this a memoir? It just felt like an extended stream of consciousness ramble.
Read
June 11, 2024I don’t think I’m comfortable giving a rating to a book about someone’s lost child, so I’m going to skip the rating for this one. I’ve been a fan of Alexandra Fuller since “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” a book I absolutely loved. She’s a vivid storyteller with an eye for detail and a sense of humor about the world. I found this book alternatingly moving and somewhat unfocused. It’s not so much about her son as it is about her own process of grieving. I think I was expecting to learn more about her relationship to her son. Instead, there is a lot of material about her recent relationships, her need for space, and her inability to cope. Much of it is heartbreaking and funny, though at times it feels like she wrote the book in order to work out her own grief rather than to tell a coherent story.
March 29, 2024
4.5 rounded to 5 stars
“Let the weather come, and come. I will stand.”
Alexandra Fuller is an “auto-read” author for me. Anything they write, I will read.
The story of Fi (pronounced “fee”) is of Fuller’s son who passes away unexpectedly in his early twenties. The author takes us through their grief in Wyoming, New Mexico, and Alberta, while trying to juggle her new relationship with a woman, and with her two remaining children. It is raw, emotional, and beautiful. The audiobook is narrated by Fuller, themself. Their voice and tone really makes the story come alive, and connects you to her pain, that much more.
Worth the read if you can handle the emotions.
(I received this ALC via NetGalley in return for an honest review. Thank you.)
“Let the weather come, and come. I will stand.”
Alexandra Fuller is an “auto-read” author for me. Anything they write, I will read.
The story of Fi (pronounced “fee”) is of Fuller’s son who passes away unexpectedly in his early twenties. The author takes us through their grief in Wyoming, New Mexico, and Alberta, while trying to juggle her new relationship with a woman, and with her two remaining children. It is raw, emotional, and beautiful. The audiobook is narrated by Fuller, themself. Their voice and tone really makes the story come alive, and connects you to her pain, that much more.
Worth the read if you can handle the emotions.
(I received this ALC via NetGalley in return for an honest review. Thank you.)
December 20, 2024
I picked up Fi after seeing it on the New York Times’ best books of the year list. It’s a memoir about grief and finding a way to move forward after the sudden loss of a child. While it’s definitely poignant and offers a fresh perspective, I have to say—it was just okay for me.
The writing has this stream-of-consciousness vibe, which makes sense given the author’s emotional state, but it didn’t always hold my attention. My mind wandered a bit, and I found it hard to stay fully engaged at times. That said, there are some really moving moments, and it does a good job of exploring grief and resilience through the lens of a different culture.
I’d recommend this if you’re into memoirs about loss and healing, but for me, it wasn’t one I’d rave about.
The writing has this stream-of-consciousness vibe, which makes sense given the author’s emotional state, but it didn’t always hold my attention. My mind wandered a bit, and I found it hard to stay fully engaged at times. That said, there are some really moving moments, and it does a good job of exploring grief and resilience through the lens of a different culture.
I’d recommend this if you’re into memoirs about loss and healing, but for me, it wasn’t one I’d rave about.
February 10, 2025
“Life needs grief the way music needs silence and love needs forgiveness. Grief is the glue for our brokenness. Without it, we’re fragile and prebroken; we’re eggshells.”
I’m very grateful for this book. We are different (the author and I), but we are in the same hideous club, and, speaking to me, her voice was loud and powerful.
I’m very grateful for this book. We are different (the author and I), but we are in the same hideous club, and, speaking to me, her voice was loud and powerful.
June 18, 2024
This newest memoir is fantastic. Heartbreaking, yes, and also about nature and healing and family. She is one of the most raw and authentic voices out there. I thank her for her honesty. I adore ALL her memoirs -- and who she is as a person.
September 12, 2024
Absolutely loved her original memoir ‘Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight’, unfortunately not this one.
Devastating sad for her loss but I felt this book was rambling, incoherent and repetitive. Skimmed the latter part of the book.
Devastating sad for her loss but I felt this book was rambling, incoherent and repetitive. Skimmed the latter part of the book.
November 18, 2023
I should have know that this book will trigger my own depression. It is sad, devastating and very personal. Don't read it if you have lost somebody you love or if you already suffer of depression.
August 18, 2024
3.5 stars. I found this difficult to read: incomplete sentences, unfinished thoughts, seeing the less admirable features of Fuller' personality in full display (particularly the way she uses Till). At one point, I was wondering if all those years of alcohol abuse has affected her ability to craft the type of memoir for which she is famous. It has been many years since I read "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" and "Scribbling the Cat." I remembered thinking very highly of them, so I carried on. The very last portion of the book was its redemption.
August 27, 2024
I don't feel as though I can rate a memoir a mother has written about her dead child. Alexandra Fuller has a rich and varied background - consequently coping with her beloved son's unexpected death includes several unconventional but fascinating coping strategies. Alexander wrote the highly acclaimed "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight." Her latest book incorporates a great of deal of her previous experiences with loss and sorrow.
April 15, 2024
Alexandra Fuller is one of my favorite authors. After reading all six book about her family and loving them I was eager to read her newest book describing her life after the loss of her son. Although well written as always this was my least favorite book so far. I understand her grief was bottomless but many people have to deal with grief and eventually go back to work and move on.
September 11, 2024
I had some issues with this - but I will not share them because grief and expression of grief are such personal matters - who am I to comment or critique? This is about a mother's pure and unfettered love for her son.
January 18, 2025
I somehow prefer funerals to weddings and can never read enough books about grief. And I read this particular memoir because the author not only ruminates about the death of her young son but also dwells on her lost life in Zimbabwe, a place I think about a lot because my own more distant grief sometimes centers there (my mother, who died long ago, once lived there, though it was called Southern Rhodesia, and that captured my imagination). Anyhow, the memoir was smart and well-written and I’ll try her other autobiographical works soon).
October 4, 2024
This is the first book I have read by Alexandra Fuller since she was recommended to me by someone who had read most of her works. The memoir was about the loss of her son in his 20s and is definitely a powerful look at grief from a mother's perspective. At times, it was hard to read (as a mother of sons, around the same age as Fuller's, and one who has epilepsy, which could result in some kind of tragedy far too readily), but it felt important too. We live in an age where we like quick and easy solutions to most problems (look at Instagram ads for example and all the products that have been devised to deal with life's unpleasantries), and, yet, Fuller reminds us that there is no shortcut for dealing with the loss of a beloved child, one has no choice but to deal with it, every day, in multiple different ways and she shares her struggles with readers who must join her on this grief journey and not look away.
Her style of writing takes some getting used to for me. It is desultory and the wandering often gets too removed from the subject, but maybe that is how grief must be addressed--not head on, but in waves of thoughts. Still, at times, I was confused by some of her references and wished there was a little more narrative order to help my reading not feel so all over the place. Overall, I am glad I read the book; it taught me or reminded me of wisdom I want to remember and made me connect with the author as a mother whose children are the "unit"with whom she most strongly identifies.
Her style of writing takes some getting used to for me. It is desultory and the wandering often gets too removed from the subject, but maybe that is how grief must be addressed--not head on, but in waves of thoughts. Still, at times, I was confused by some of her references and wished there was a little more narrative order to help my reading not feel so all over the place. Overall, I am glad I read the book; it taught me or reminded me of wisdom I want to remember and made me connect with the author as a mother whose children are the "unit"with whom she most strongly identifies.
April 7, 2024
I always love Alexandra Fuller's poetic, evocative writing, as I did in this book.
I don't want to say too much because it would make me sound like an unkind and unsympathetic person. My mom died when I was 16 and my dad died when I was 36. So I have known loss, but never the loss of a child. So I couldn't identify with the intense, debilitating grief that Fuller felt. But it kind of bothered me that she couldn't even celebrate her daughter's birthday after Fi died. Anyway, my lack of understand of this unrelenting grief kind of got in the way of my loving this book, sorry to say.
I don't want to say too much because it would make me sound like an unkind and unsympathetic person. My mom died when I was 16 and my dad died when I was 36. So I have known loss, but never the loss of a child. So I couldn't identify with the intense, debilitating grief that Fuller felt. But it kind of bothered me that she couldn't even celebrate her daughter's birthday after Fi died. Anyway, my lack of understand of this unrelenting grief kind of got in the way of my loving this book, sorry to say.
April 17, 2024
Though it is impossible for Alexandra Fuller to write badly, I ended up just skimming this book which tells the story of the sudden, unexpected death of her son. She goes into more detail about the psychological residue of her childhood, her failed marriage, her estrangement from her mother and sister - it had to come after the years of alcohol and madness. But grief is so intensely personal that it is hard to make it interesting to others and maybe having just read one of her books I didn't need any more of the same.
November 12, 2024
A mother’s autobiography on losing her 20 something year old son Fi. I should have guessed it would be dark and sad but didn’t - I got caught in moms heartbreak and nearly took the option she didn’t have - to step away from the book - but I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t have another book
So I ploughed on. It never got happy but she comes through. Shew.
So I ploughed on. It never got happy but she comes through. Shew.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 262 reviews