The End Is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother

by Jill Bialosky

Jill Bialosky, the poet behind the “tender, absorbing, and deeply moving memoir” (Entertainment Weekly) History of a Suicide, returns with a lyrical portrait of her mother’s life, told in reverse order from burial to birth.

When Iris Yvonne Bialosky died in an assisted care facility on March 29, 2020, it unleashed a torrent of emotions in her daughter, Jill Bialosky. Grief, of course, but also guilt, confusion, and doubt, all of which were compounded by the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic which made it impossible for Jill to be with her mother as she was dying and to attend her mother’s funeral.

Now, with a poet’s eye for detail and a novelist’s flair for storytelling, Jill presents a profoundly moving elegy unlike any other. Starting with her mother’s end and the physical/cognitive decline that led her to a care home, The End Is the Beginning explores Iris’s battle with depression, the tragedy of a daughter’s suicide, a failed second marriage, the death of her beloved first husband only five years into their young marriage, her joyful teenage years, and the trauma of losing her own mother at just eight years old. Compounding her challenges of raising four daughters without a livelihood or partner, Iris’s life coincided with an age of unstoppable social change and reinvention, when the roles of wife and mother she was raised to inhabit ceased to be the guarantors of stability and happiness.

As we see Iris become younger and younger, we learn how we are all the sum of our experiences. Iris becomes a multi-dimensional, fascinating woman. We come to understand her difficulties and shortcomings, her neediness and her generosity, her pride and her despair. The End Is the Beginning is not just a family memoir, it is a brave and compassionate celebration of a woman’s life and death and a window into a daughter’s inextricable bond to her mother.

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

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 9, 2025

About the author

Jill Bialosky was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She studied for her undergraduate degree at Ohio University and received a Master of Arts degree from the Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.

Her collections of poems are Subterranean (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) and The End of Desire (1997). Bialosky is also the author of the novel House Under Snow (2002) and The Life Room (2007) and co-editor, with Helen Schulman, of the anthology Wanting A Child (1998).

Her poems and essays appear in The New Yorker, O Magazine, Paris Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review among other publications.

Bialosky has received a number of awards including the Elliot Coleman Award in Poetry. She is currently an editor at W. W. Norton & Company and lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book, but a difficult read. Having lost one parent and another at the end, I should’ve waited to read this under different circumstances. It would feel disingenuous not to acknowledge how my own experience colored my reading of a book about something I simply don’t want to face right now.

I’m not in the publishing world, nor do I have any influence over what gets published or what readers want. But I do feel fairly confident in saying that I think the average reader is hesitant when it comes to COVID memoirs or pandemic plot-lines. For me, it still feels too raw. I think a lot of us aren’t quite ready to walk into post-pandemic analysis or plotlines.

The End is the Beginning touches on the pandemic, but thankfully it Benjamin-Buttons its way out of it quickly enough, but there are enough allusions that it feels at time to be a backdrop over the book.

Bialosky writes her mother’s life in reverse starting with her death and traveling back to before her birth. In doing so, she dissects not only her mother Iris’s life, but also her own grief. She wrestles with the decisions she made at the end: not seeing her mother during COVID lockdowns, not attending the burial, and trying to reconcile the echoes of her mother’s life in her own.

A renowned poet, Bialosky strips away her usual elegiac voice, writing instead in clipped, direct sentences that carry a quiet rhythm. This is not metaphor or flourish. It’s her truth.

As a child, she recalls how her mother’s tumultuous life shaped her inner world:

“I am like Eurydice who has lost her voice. I am afraid of birds that swoop too low. I’m afraid to talk to boys. I am afraid to speak in class in case I am wrong, and blush from embarrassment.”

In one of her most poignant and stripped-down reflections, she continues:

“I feel an emptiness and a detachment from myself. Sometimes, I have the strangest feeling that I don’t exist. Maybe all children feel they are second fiddle in the orchestra of their parent’s dramatic and sometimes careless lives.”

The End is the Beginning reminded me of Diane Johnson’s Flyover Lives, another memoir that explores the deep hold that family has on us. In Bialosky’s case, her mother’s life casts a long shadow over her own.

I could give a more detailed synopsis, but honestly, that’s already in the book’s description.

Here’s what this book really is: a renowned poet grappling with the guilt and loss of her beloved mother. It likely wasn’t the beginning of the end for her—but the opposite. What the reader gets is not just a memoir or the story of a life, but a raw, unfiltered glimpse into the mind and soul of someone reeling, someone trying to make sense of grief, guilt, and mortality. Bialosky had to write this book—and you can feel it.

We don’t just observe her grief—we enter it. And isn’t that the backbone of empathy? To truly feel what someone else is going through. And isn’t that worth reading?

Thanks to Washington Square Press and Goodreads for review copy.

[Ruby Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I loved most about "The End is the Beginning" is how the author used small details and bits of dialogue to bring the significant moments of her mother's history to life. Although she presents the narrative in reverse order (from death to birth), each stage feels weighted with insight and tenderness. It caused me to wonder how my parents were forged, and what portions of my life I would choose to illustrate who I am today. Highly recommended, particularly to anyone with mother issues. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. Pub Date: May 5, 2025.

#TheEndIsTheBeginning

[Vivienne Strauss · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thought provoking memoir that brought tears to my eyes multiple times. Thank you to the publisher who sent an ARC.

[Pamela Jo Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a heart warming, but heart breaking read. My momma is my best friend and she’s going to be 75 this year. She’s a little slower physically, but mentally she’s stable and happy and loving and present. I can’t and don’t want to imagine living my life knowing she’s declining and going. So reading this book made me count my blessings, be grateful for the fact that, even though she tells some of the same stories, they remind me that her memory is good. I am grateful to Jill Bialosky for writing what must have been a difficult, but moving novel about the relationship of mother and daughter, and the exchange of caregiving of a mother to a child and from a child to their parent. What a beautiful circle of life.

Thank you to the publishers and Goodreads for giving me the opportunity to read and review 😊

Disclaimer - I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway

[Marika · Rating 4 out of 5]

*I read an advance copy and was not compensated

[Elizabeth Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book quickly on a beach vacation. An “every family” story told from end to the beginning. It was a wonderful little memoir that details her mothers life story. It was amazing that every question I had was answered in subsequent chapters. Enjoyed very much

[Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE END IS THE BEGINNING asks the question that any grown child might ask following the death of a parent: Who were they? We know tidbits or morsels of their lives from stories they shared or from anecdotes that families laugh about at gatherings. But do we --- can we --- know them as a whole person, not just as our mother or father?

There is no denying that Jill Bialosky loved her mother, Iris Yvonne Bialosky. Iris’ death, in a care facility during the pandemic, was a blow to Bialosky and her sisters. Unable to attend the funeral because of lockdown, she was forced to watch as the weather cut the ceremony short. It felt symbolic somehow.

When Iris died, Bialosky wanted to know more about her. “I am,” she wrote, “cognizant that there are things I will never know about mother.” But she forged ahead to write a book “made of impressions, memories, and stories, some of my own, others told to me. I depended on photos, intuition, research, and my own imaginings.” Bialosky filled in the blanks as a tribute to her mother.

The result is a stunning memoir, told backwards, from death to birth. Bialosky writes a breathtaking recollection of witnessing her mother’s decline, interwoven with her mother’s movement from one care facility to the next. At one point she writes, “I’m filled with panic and sorrow for what’s to come.” As a reader, we already know what is to come --- what has transpired in earlier chapters --- but there is still something so poignant in Bialosky’s admission that even in the beauty and passage of time, there exists the “cruel ripples of savage.”

With each passing chapter, Bialosky treats us to more revelations about her mother: the early signs that something wasn’t right with her memory, the loss of one of her daughters, her second marriage, and her first short-lived marriage. We see the home where Iris raised her girls, or, as Bialosky describes it, “[t]he house we wanted to escape, and then come running home to…a place to come home to when we were directionless, a pit stop between college and being grown-up.”

We meet the various caretakers who journeyed with Iris in her senior years. And we become acquainted with Kim, Iris’ youngest daughter, who “was like a locked safe, unwilling to open up or share, not wanting to burden anyone” and who ultimately took her own life. During shiva, Bialosky shares, she “is proud of my mother. It must be so hard to face her friends, Kim’s teachers and peers --- a mother is supposed to protect her child --- but she does it with dignity. All she wants now is to honor her daughter.”

The next chapters reveal a woman battling depression, and Bialosky compares her to female literary characters who are “weakened by desire, diminished by the patriarchy, with no real means of their own.” She wants her mother to be stronger and serve as a role model, but at the same time, she recognizes that much of this was not by choice, but rather by societal dictum. As we meet Iris in earlier years, Bialosky uses journal entries to introduce Iris the ingenue, who always seemed to have dates. And we can begin to see some of her disparate characteristics arise. Iris was the product of loss herself, losing her mother at the age of eight.

In the end, Bialosky sees her mother as the heroine of her own story, even if she didn’t always see that earlier in life. The writing of this beautiful memoir helped Bialosky answer questions about who Iris was, what she knew about her, and what she needed to discover. Like her mother’s own tribute to the daughter she lost, THE END IS THE BEGINNING is Bialosky’s tribute to a woman who survived the tragedies and joys that formed her and lives on in her family.

Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One narrative that will explain it all because we always need a story, an account, to make sense of the inexplicable. from The End Is the Beginning by Jill Bialosky

My mother was fifty-seven years old when she died of cancer. I was thirty-eight. She had been diagnosed with cancer two weeks before her death. I had just moved back to my home state to be near family after our son was born.

During those two weeks, while Mom underwent chemotherapy and called all her friends and relatives to tell them the news, I kept up a face of competence during the day, and at night wrote poems to express my grief. Poems about diagnosis, her medical history, the impending loss of a mother, and finally, remembering stories she told me about her teenage years as the local ‘jitterbug queen’.

When I began reading Jill Bialosky’s memoir of her mother, beginning with her death and years with Alzheimer’s, I wondered if I could bear such tragedy. Bialosky told her mother’s story backwards, and frankly, there was tragedy after tragedy. Until she came to her mother’s teenage years, looking over her scrapbooks and diaries, discovering joy and fun and hope. And I realized the brilliance of storytelling backwards, ending with the promise each young life holds.

Unlike Bialosky’s mother, my mother didn’t lose a child, but she did lose two siblings. My mother didn’t lose a husband to death or divorce. But she did deal with deforming autoimmune diseases, psoriasis that made her embarrassed and psoriatic arthritis that left her crippled. She prayed for an early death rather than endure an old age unable to care for herself, especially for the psoriasis. Death came early, sadly after a new medication had stabilized her conditions and allowed her a more active life.

Bialosky’s memoir is beautiful and heart breaking. We each have a story of loss and grief, and there is something cathartic about reading another’s story.

The book title, she shares at the end, is from some of my favorite lines by T. S. Eliot in the Four Quartets, where he writes in East Coker :

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

And from Little Gidding, she adds the lines I once had on my bulletin board at my desk,

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all or exploring
WIll be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Mom told stories all my life. I loved looking at her old photographs and hearing about the people. I became a genealogist, researching newspapers and documents for facts and information about family. Understanding our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents helps us to understand them and ourselves. It is a circular exploration.

A beautiful book.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

[Zibby Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a lyrical memoir told in reverse chronology, tracing her mother's remarkable life from her death during COVID back to her childhood in the Depression era. Unable to be present for her mother's passing or funeral due to pandemic restrictions, Bialosky honors Iris's memory by exploring pivotal moments in her life: her battle with Alzheimer's, the tragedy of her daughter's suicide, an abusive second marriage, early widowhood at the age of 25, and the loss of her mother at just nine years old. This profound elegy reveals how inherited trauma shapes us while celebrating the enduring power of love and resilience across generations.

This book completely devastated me, most beautifully. Bialosky’s poetic prose made me tear up constantly; the way she captures how we carry our loved ones with us through small gestures and inherited habits was incredibly moving. I loved the reverse chronology structure; watching her mother come alive as we moved backward through time felt magical and perfect for this story. The passage about hearing her mother's voice in everyday moments, such as draining noodles or saying "sha" to quiet the dog, was beautiful. What struck me most was how Bialosky transforms personal grief into something universal, showing how we are all shaped by those we love. This isn't just a sad book about loss; it's an inspiring celebration of how love transcends death and continues to guide us.

To listen to my interview with the author, visit my podcast at: https://zibbymedia.com/blogs/transcri...

[Kenzie Tuttle · Rating 4 out of 5]

*** I received a free copy of this book through a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for an honest review ***

4 Stars - The End is the Beginning is a fascinating look at the life of Iris Bialosky. Although Iris is the central figure, I feel like I’ve learned as much about the author as I have her mother. Bialosky’s style of storytelling really allows the reader to connect and empathize with the people featured in this memoir.

Although the early chapters are some of the most difficult to read because of the darker subject matter, I think they are also some of the most compelling. The author shows us a world that most people avoid thinking about. The descriptions of the care homes are so vivid and immediately relatable to anyone who has spent time there with loved ones.

Starting with the funeral was an excellent choice, because the reader knows the mother has passed before we even begin reading, but Iris’s early life is what was initially a mystery. We get hints at what is coming and it makes for an engaging narrative. The focus on the scrapbook that Iris made in her youth in order to remember everything she did is a bittersweet ending.

The book is extremely well written, but it is a challenging read because of the topics covered. It’s also a very fast read, I found once I got stared it was very easy to keep reading.



 Thank you so much for the copy of this book. I’m grateful for the opportunity to read it.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book on the premise that it starts with the death of the author's mother and then works backward through her mother's life. This may sound morbid but for those caring for loved ones with dementia, it can sometimes feel like there is no end, so I wanted to start there. Bialosky is a poet by trade and this is evident in her prose, such as when speaking of how she feels leaving her mother's skilled nursing facility after a difficult visit: "It's as if the gates have opened back to the world we inhabit and like horses being let out of their stalls we are achingly free."

In reconstructing the narrative of her mother's life backwards, the reader can chart the worst moments of loss over her mother's lifetime with the benefit of perspective. Bialosky grapples with her complicated feelings at her mother's devastating cognitive decline: "Without purpose, what makes a life? I don't know how to improve it and berate myself for not always feeling compassionate." One fault in this reverse timeline is that the narrator's knowledge of events becomes fuzzier as we approach her mother's younger years. These later chapters were less engaging for me due to this narrative distance from events that felt more reported than lived and were understandably vague. Nevertheless, this memoir may provide some comfort for those caring for their elders and living with all the uncertainty that comes with it.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to enjoy this book more than I did. The first part of the book focuses on the last days of the author’s mom Iris’s death. It hit me personally as my own mother struggles with dementia and it is heartbreaking. In a way, I wanted to hurry through this part to get to a happier time in her mother’s life. I didn’t like all of the references the author threw into this section regarding studies on dementia and such. It got too “textbook like” and didn’t flow well as I tried to get a feel for Jill’s situation and grief. Unfortunately, the rest of the story didn’t read smoothly for me due to other reasons. I would have preferred to have heard more vignettes about events in Iris’s life rather than bits and pieces. I thought I would enjoy reading a story like this told backwards from the end of Iris’s life to the beginning. It could be interesting and unique. However, because of how it was laid out I found it to be a bit all over the place. It didn’t allow for me to really get a better sense for who Iris truly was as a person (though what I did get was that she didn’t lead an easy life, particularly in her adult years) and even only made me feel a glimmer of what Jill’s relationship with her was like.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for an ARC of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.

[Alyssa Lindstrom]

No rating (nonfiction)

This book was incredibly informative but sad. I constantly found myself reflecting on my own relationship with my mother and putting myself in the author's shoes. I found it fascinating to view life from the ending to the beginning. Jill takes us through her mother's life by starting with her death. This timeline was fascinating, but really started off the book on a somber note. We see her mother's total decline and life totally dependent on others from the start. In my opinion, having the knowledge of how a person's life will end does impact how you view them in their childhood. You can empathize a bit more.

The End Is the Beginning has a subdued nature that reflects the author's desire to write a eulogy to her mother and acknowledge her for who she is. It read as a therapeutic piece for the author, but as a reader, I did struggle to relate. This novel read as an intensely intimate journal I was secretly reading at times. Jill is a poet and the book reflects that as well as the writing comes off as poetic and incredibly well written.

Overall, I recommend The End is the Beginning if you lost someone during the COVID-19 pandemic, have lost a close relative to Alzheimers, or struggle to understand your own mother.

[Bonnie Krauss · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book.

Being a Clevelander, I was very familiar with the nursing homes described so accurately. I also had a mom living on that campus and dealt with the same issues of decline, as well as death during Covid, and all of its limitations.

The format of starting with the end just worked so well. I feel like we just gained more understanding of Iris as the story progressed.

How wonderful for Iris to be immortalized in this manner. From what we learned about her, she would have been grateful for this tribute.

Reading about Iris’ youth brought back more memories, and a sense of peace. I love how the relatives stepped in to help raise Iris and her brother.

This is one of my all-time favorite stories. The subject itself was interesting, and the execution was excellent.

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jill lost her mother, Iris, in the early days of the Covid pandemic, at a time when she could not be there with her in her last days and also could not attend her funeral. The book goes backward in time, traveling all the way back to before Iris was born.

The writing is stark and beautiful in its simplicity, shot right through with emotion. And, somehow, too, there is room for me and my own grief inside Jill’s words. Iris loses a daughter, and Jill loses a sister at the same time. The way this tragedy is explored is something that will stay with me forever.

I received a gifted copy.

Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

[Armelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for free as a Goodreads giveaway.

This book opens with the early Covid-era death of the author’s mother. Each chapter takes a step back through her mother’s life.

It’s very well written, although the random literary references sprinkled throughout - everything from Dante’s Inferno to Jack and the Beanstalk - seemed forced and distracting. The last couple of chapters, when Iris was young, felt different to me. Once Iris’s story moved back in time beyond the author’s personal experience of her mother, the tone seemed to change a little, which isn’t a surprise, but it didn’t work as well for me.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very moving, beautifully written book. The parts covering her mother’s decline were a bit hard for me to read as nearly all of it was familiar, having gone through that same experience with my mother. But it was lovingly & honestly portrayed, which also made me feel a little less alone. My only difficulty was the backwards through time format, which often made it feel somewhat jumbled since we knew most of what had already happened as we read it. In many ways, that format really worked, but at times it felt clunky. Overall, a lovely & touching tribute to the impact our mothers & their life stories have on our own lives.

[Sara Neufeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found the structure of this memoir — beginning with the death of Jill’s mom Iris and ending with Iris's childhood — so compelling. I had a lump in my throat for the whole second half of the book knowing how things would turn out. Traveling back in time, it's powerful to see how pivotal and mundane experiences intertwine to shape a life. I listened to the audiobook, and Jill did a beautiful job narrating her beautiful, nuanced tribute to a woman who endured so much. I once heard that memoir’s purpose is to show how “we bear the unbearable” — and bear the unbearable Iris did. Iris, Jill and their family (especially Jill’s sister Kim) took up residence in my heart.

[NrsKelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully told story of the author’s mother but in reverse. We begin at her mother’s death. In the midst of COVID quarantines, which means the author cannot even attend her mother’s funeral.
I really enjoyed the way this book was written. The beauty of the prose, and her ability to make you feel again what we felt in the beginning of the pandemic. It’s a route from despair to hope. From the end….back to her mother’s childhood.
This is definitely a gorgeous read.
I received a ARC of this book, all opinions are my own

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written book that captured me on the first page with the death of the author's mom. The descriptions of her feelings then and throughout their lifetime relationship, stayed with me long after I read the last page. Starting at the end of her mother's life felt like a trip back in time which I found so effective and moving. The author portrays the loving and tender moments in the relationship with her mom, as well as those more painful and complicated. The book resonated with me and gave me insight, as I grapple with the past and understand how much it impacts my present.

[Francescajemm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book shines when there is a strong, first person “I” on the page. I found that when the material predated the consciousness of the “I,” the prose felt untethered, like it wasn’t sure what it was trying to do. It’s understandable, of course, but it distracted me all the same. All told, though, this is an unflinching look at the complexities that make up a life - the beauty, the sorrow, the things we get right, the ones we get horribly, irreparably wrong.

[Ali Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read everything by Jill Bialosky, and I'm a huge fan of her work. Very few authors have the ability to write beautifully, deeply, while also crafting a page-turning narrative. Everything she's written has been resonant and powerful. Hints of her mother's plight appeared in some of Bialosky's other works, and I'm looking forward to learning the whole story.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5 stars rounded up)

This is not an easy book to read emotionally, but it’s certainly thought-provoking.

The backwards structure works surprisingly well and Bialosky’s writing pulled me into the narrative.

Thanks to Washington Square Press for the free advanced reader’s copy!

[Ruth Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 mothers and daughters

[M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a good read.

[Zelda Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO beautiful but so very sad. I had to close the book multiple times to take a break. Invites reflection and invokes deep emotion. Worth the read despite the pain.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sad eulogy of her mother. Memories of our own mothers and family trauma that we all weather in a lifetime; passed down through generations.

[Tim Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful and emotional memoir that moved me to tears more than once.

[Greta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author complaining about the posh assisted living residence - I've regularly visited loved ones at least 10 different facilities and none come close to the niceness of her mom's place.

[kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

terrible disease.
sweet personal memoir