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Los guardianes
La noche del 23 de julio de 2008, un hombre fue arrollado por un tren de la línea Metro-North de Nueva York justo antes de llegar a la estación West 254th Street del Bronx. «El maquinista declaró ante la Policía que el hombre estaba solo y que saltó», escribe Sarah Manguso con implacable claridad en la primera página de este libro. «Los agentes de las fuerzas del orden retiraron el cuerpo de las vías y no encontraron identificación alguna. A los 425 pasajeros del cercanías se los trasladó a otro tren, lo que les ocasionó un retraso de veinte minutos.»
El cuerpo resultó ser el de Harris Wulfson, un músico e ingeniero de software amigo de Manguso, que ese mismo día había abandonado el hospital psiquiátrico en el que había ingresado por propia voluntad para darse muerte diez horas más tarde arrojándose a las vías del tren. Y este libro, Los guardianes, es una elegía para Harris, escrito dos años después de su muerte. En él, Manguso narra con una mezcla de dolor y de humor la historia de su amistad, abarcando la época en que convivieron en un abarrotado apartamento postuniversitario, el año de beca de Manguso en Roma, la muerte de Harris y el duelo que siguió, marcado también por el comienzo de su matrimonio. A medida que se va dibujando el retrato de su amigo, el libro se convierte en un monumento a su intimidad y a su incapacidad para expresar adecuadamente su amor mutuo, y a los efectos reverberantes de la presencia y la ausencia de Harris en la vida de Manguso. En definitiva, Los guardianes explora la insuficiencia de las explicaciones y la necesidad de la imaginación para dar sentido a cualquier cosa, y al mismo tiempo deviene una reflexión sobre los motivos y el dolor que acompaña a la pérdida de un ser querido.
El cuerpo resultó ser el de Harris Wulfson, un músico e ingeniero de software amigo de Manguso, que ese mismo día había abandonado el hospital psiquiátrico en el que había ingresado por propia voluntad para darse muerte diez horas más tarde arrojándose a las vías del tren. Y este libro, Los guardianes, es una elegía para Harris, escrito dos años después de su muerte. En él, Manguso narra con una mezcla de dolor y de humor la historia de su amistad, abarcando la época en que convivieron en un abarrotado apartamento postuniversitario, el año de beca de Manguso en Roma, la muerte de Harris y el duelo que siguió, marcado también por el comienzo de su matrimonio. A medida que se va dibujando el retrato de su amigo, el libro se convierte en un monumento a su intimidad y a su incapacidad para expresar adecuadamente su amor mutuo, y a los efectos reverberantes de la presencia y la ausencia de Harris en la vida de Manguso. En definitiva, Los guardianes explora la insuficiencia de las explicaciones y la necesidad de la imaginación para dar sentido a cualquier cosa, y al mismo tiempo deviene una reflexión sobre los motivos y el dolor que acompaña a la pérdida de un ser querido.
112 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 2012
40 people are currently reading
2667 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Manguso
26 books986 followersSarah Manguso is the author of nine books, most recently the novel LIARS.
Her previous novel, VERY COLD PEOPLE, was longlisted for the Wingate Literary Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
Her other books include a story collection, two poetry collections, and four acclaimed works of nonfiction: 300 ARGUMENTS, ONGOINGNESS, THE GUARDIANS, and THE TWO KINDS OF DECAY.
Her work has been recognized by an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. Her writing has been translated into thirteen languages.
She grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Los Angeles.
Her previous novel, VERY COLD PEOPLE, was longlisted for the Wingate Literary Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
Her other books include a story collection, two poetry collections, and four acclaimed works of nonfiction: 300 ARGUMENTS, ONGOINGNESS, THE GUARDIANS, and THE TWO KINDS OF DECAY.
Her work has been recognized by an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Rome Prize. Her writing has been translated into thirteen languages.
She grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 166 reviews
January 6, 2025
Seis de enero y ya creo que he leído uno de los libros que entran en mi top de este año. He terminado de leer y he necesitado abrazarlo a ver si el nudo que tenía en la garganta lograba disminuir. En vano.
Prosa poética sobre el duelo, narrado de forma autobiográfica sobre lo que le supuso a la autora el suicidio de su amigo Harris. Ejemplo también de lo curativo y terapéutico que es la escritura.
No sé, siento que recurriré más de una vez a esta hermosa, profunda y tristísima elegía, así que la dejaré a la vista en mi estantería.
Prosa poética sobre el duelo, narrado de forma autobiográfica sobre lo que le supuso a la autora el suicidio de su amigo Harris. Ejemplo también de lo curativo y terapéutico que es la escritura.
No sé, siento que recurriré más de una vez a esta hermosa, profunda y tristísima elegía, así que la dejaré a la vista en mi estantería.
January 11, 2023
Not my favourite of Manguso's books but the final third was breathtaking. Her prose is just so sharp and perfect. She's so very good at what she does.
March 5, 2020
A giugno 2019 scrivevo solo questo:
“Questo libro è così toccante e struggente che non ho ancora le parole giuste per scriverne.”
Non ce le ho ancora le parole.
Questa più che una recensione, è la narrazione dell’incontro con questo libro.
Sono stata attratta da questo libro un’estate mentre ero alle terme.
Mi sembrava una lettura che si potesse fare in un paio di ore e fu così che scelsi quel libro dalla mia libreria Kindle. Quello tra tanti su cui ero indecisa.
I libri ci scelgono e ci vengono a trovare quando è il momento giusto per leggerli.
Inizio a leggerlo spensierata, perché tale era l’ambiente che mi circondava. E dalle prime pagine la scrittura mi è sembrata leggera, adatta a un clima di vacanza. Era giugno, ricordo. E nel pieno della mia ricettività, vengo travolta da un’onda d’urto a forte impatto emotivo.
E resto così, interdetta, travolta e stravolta da questo tsunami di emozioni.
Sul sito NN
🗞 https://www.nneditore.it/libri/il-salto/
“Questo libro è così toccante e struggente che non ho ancora le parole giuste per scriverne.”
Non ce le ho ancora le parole.
Questa più che una recensione, è la narrazione dell’incontro con questo libro.
Sono stata attratta da questo libro un’estate mentre ero alle terme.
Mi sembrava una lettura che si potesse fare in un paio di ore e fu così che scelsi quel libro dalla mia libreria Kindle. Quello tra tanti su cui ero indecisa.
I libri ci scelgono e ci vengono a trovare quando è il momento giusto per leggerli.
Inizio a leggerlo spensierata, perché tale era l’ambiente che mi circondava. E dalle prime pagine la scrittura mi è sembrata leggera, adatta a un clima di vacanza. Era giugno, ricordo. E nel pieno della mia ricettività, vengo travolta da un’onda d’urto a forte impatto emotivo.
E resto così, interdetta, travolta e stravolta da questo tsunami di emozioni.
Sul sito NN
🗞 https://www.nneditore.it/libri/il-salto/
February 14, 2016
I love small, perfect books. Books that can be read in one sitting, with enough time left over afterward, to bask in them, think about them, savor them. "The All of It," by Jeannette Haien. Penelope Fitzgerald's novels. "Fifty Days of Solitude" by Doris Grumbach. And this book, "The Guardians," by Sarah Manguso. Unlike many books about death, it is not also about affirming life. This is a book about someone dying, and how that death affects another. A man jumps in front of a train. A woman reads about it in the newspaper. The man turns out to be the woman's dear friend. This is not fiction. This is an essay about Manguso coming to terms with her friend, Harris, taking his own life. Manguso is a poet, and there is a poet's economy in the telling. But I would not call her writing poetic in any flowery sense of the word. She writes with great strength about how grief is individual and private. The beauty in this is that she captures its privacy so well that she spoke to exactly how I feel about my own experiences with grief: "Don't tell me about the rich variety of mourning customs throughout the world from the beginning of civilization to now ... I don't care to know how others act out the playlet of their ruination. I want to know about my particular grief, which is unknowable, just like everyone else's." Having devoured this book, I will go back and reread it slowly, and slowly again. Next up: Manguso's "Ongoingness."
March 7, 2015
You know how I feel about Sarah Manguso. Beautiful spare prose about losing a friend to tragedy. About loving people and meeting new people and loving them and time and grief and dybbuks and how no one can observe the colour of your grief but you. Beautiful and important.
November 30, 2020
A deeply compelling and nuanced grief memoir. It may not have been a great time for me to read this, as I'm currently grieving, but Manguso's poetic voice often brought me comfort. It also burrowed into my thoughts and made my heart heavy for her loss.
December 25, 2024
El día que no esté, quiero que alguien sea mi Sarah Manguso. Que ese alguien sea capaz de sentir mi pérdida como una serie de fotografías aleatorias de aquello que vivimos y no piense en lo que no pudo ser. Qué triste y qué bonito ha sido este pequeño viaje por el dolor de una persona
July 26, 2019
Kurt Vonnegut says the best thing a poet can do is write a poem and send it to a friend. Sarah Manguso did that here. She wrote a poem for Harris. We are lucky, we get to see it too.
January 14, 2025
Una escritura muy inteligente pero esperaba algo más emotivo (que también tiene sus momentos, pero pocos). Me ha gustado, pero en algunos momentos me he encontrado distraído o que quería saltar páginas, lo cual no es buena señal. Siendo un libro corto, lo recomiendo para pasar el rato o de libro entre lecturas. Eso sí, trata temas como el suicidio (no destripo nada, está en la sinopsis) o las enfermedades mentales, para que vayas sobre aviso si, como es mi caso, estos temas te tocan de cerca. No descubre nada nuevo, solo otro punto de vista más, que personalmente encuentro de gran ayuda siempre.
No soy muy fan de las ediciones de Alpha Decay, suelen contener bastantes más erratas que la media de libros. Por desgracia, y a pesar de una notable mejora, sigue ocurriendo lo mismo en este libro, con fallos tan graves como "[...] pelos en el baño del suelo [...]". Creo que les iría bien dar a sus libros un último repaso antes de publicar. Aún así se lee bien.
No soy muy fan de las ediciones de Alpha Decay, suelen contener bastantes más erratas que la media de libros. Por desgracia, y a pesar de una notable mejora, sigue ocurriendo lo mismo en este libro, con fallos tan graves como "[...] pelos en el baño del suelo [...]". Creo que les iría bien dar a sus libros un último repaso antes de publicar. Aún así se lee bien.
October 26, 2017
I loved Sarah Manguso's book, The Two Kinds of Decay, but nowhere near as much as love this book, The Guardians, a sparse, but beautiful book about the author's investigation into the suicide of a friend. I could get lost in her prose and her raw emotions. There's just nothing more to be said.
April 2, 2025
Muy íntimo. Muy personal. Leer esta novela se me ha hecho como escuchar de alguien que no conoces de nada sus pensamientos más profundos. Sin embargo, no me interesado, me deja frío, no consigue que vaya conmigo.
June 17, 2012
The thing with death is that the solution key to so many mysteries, including the final whys and hows and “what does that feel like,” all get buried with the body. In the case of Harris, the inspiration for Sarah Manguso’s elegy “The Guardians,” there are an additional 10 hours worth of mysteries that occurred between when her friend left the hospital without money, a phone or identification, and when he tossed his own body in front of a train.
Manguso met Harris in college and was good enough friends with him to get invited to his family’s home for a holiday. They lived together with a handful of roommates for awhile in New York City in a loft with makeshift cubicle style rooms. And when the World Trade Centers fell, it was his arm around her and his out-of-town getaway stop where they took refuge in the aftermath. Between them they had inside jokes and a poem by Mangusos. They had drinks and birthday cakes and conversations about the size of his junk.
So what happened to Harris: He’d been hospitalized twice before and it’s his third stay when he walks out the front door, does something indiscernible for 10 hours, then jumps in front of a train. Manguso can’t remember exactly when she last saw him. She’d been abroad for a year. Now that he’s gone, he’s stuck in her craw. This story seems to be a way of exorcising him, or considering what happened.
Manguso isn’t interested in a journalistic account of events. She doesn’t want to interview the conductor from the train or Harris’s parents. She’s also not interested in writing fan fiction to invent the missing 10 hours. She has some hypothesis on the whys -- ranging from the side effects of his medication or being encouraged by a dybbuk. Manguso’s background is poetry, which she uses to create memory vignettes.
I don’t find this kind of writing lovely, I find it annoyingly coy. Her sentences dance around the edges of what she means. Like: She refers to her now-husband in memories as “The man who wasn’t yet my husband.” Occasionally all that swirling pushes out a great sentence or a great idea. But for the most part it feels like reading vague status updates from your most emo Facebook friend. Some people would like the way this is written and I can appreciate that. But it’s a stylistic issue for me and this just feels too super-serious and purposefully fuzzy.
Manguso met Harris in college and was good enough friends with him to get invited to his family’s home for a holiday. They lived together with a handful of roommates for awhile in New York City in a loft with makeshift cubicle style rooms. And when the World Trade Centers fell, it was his arm around her and his out-of-town getaway stop where they took refuge in the aftermath. Between them they had inside jokes and a poem by Mangusos. They had drinks and birthday cakes and conversations about the size of his junk.
So what happened to Harris: He’d been hospitalized twice before and it’s his third stay when he walks out the front door, does something indiscernible for 10 hours, then jumps in front of a train. Manguso can’t remember exactly when she last saw him. She’d been abroad for a year. Now that he’s gone, he’s stuck in her craw. This story seems to be a way of exorcising him, or considering what happened.
Manguso isn’t interested in a journalistic account of events. She doesn’t want to interview the conductor from the train or Harris’s parents. She’s also not interested in writing fan fiction to invent the missing 10 hours. She has some hypothesis on the whys -- ranging from the side effects of his medication or being encouraged by a dybbuk. Manguso’s background is poetry, which she uses to create memory vignettes.
I don’t find this kind of writing lovely, I find it annoyingly coy. Her sentences dance around the edges of what she means. Like: She refers to her now-husband in memories as “The man who wasn’t yet my husband.” Occasionally all that swirling pushes out a great sentence or a great idea. But for the most part it feels like reading vague status updates from your most emo Facebook friend. Some people would like the way this is written and I can appreciate that. But it’s a stylistic issue for me and this just feels too super-serious and purposefully fuzzy.
March 5, 2012
I found this beautifully written, and very, very moving.
The subject is the suicide of one of the author's closest friends... but as with almost all books I love, it's about much more: the meaning of family and relationship and marriage and friendship, and how slippery and undefinable, finally, those things are; grief and mourning and how undefinable they are, as well; how we try to understand our lives, and how impossible it is to do that, and the necessity of continuing to try.
The Guardians is brief, but intensely full of feeling. It's written in a series of episodes/fragments/snapshots that aren't chronological, and that seem completely appropriate to the author's process of trying to document, understand, accept something that is unacceptable to her in a fundamental way. There's nothing cliched about the writing or the feelings Sarah Manguso describes; I kept being surprised and startled, and completely believing in the truth of what she writes. I think this book will stay with me for a long time. And I'm happy I own it, because I know I'll want to read it again.
On a sort of side note, one of the things I most appreciated about the book--along with Sarah Manguso's intense honesty, and her graceful writing--is the fact that it's about what many people would consider a "secondary" kind of relationship: a friendship, not a marriage or intimate partnership or familial relationship. At one point, the author writes about the difficulty and confusion of grieving someone who isn't family or her husband. To me, the book is a gorgeous illustration of how much those other relationships can matter, if we're lucky enough to have them (and the last word of the book is "lucky"); they can be as rich and deep and essential as the relationships that we're often told should take priority over them. Sarah Manguso says this way more beautifully in The Guardians, of course, without actually saying it.
The subject is the suicide of one of the author's closest friends... but as with almost all books I love, it's about much more: the meaning of family and relationship and marriage and friendship, and how slippery and undefinable, finally, those things are; grief and mourning and how undefinable they are, as well; how we try to understand our lives, and how impossible it is to do that, and the necessity of continuing to try.
The Guardians is brief, but intensely full of feeling. It's written in a series of episodes/fragments/snapshots that aren't chronological, and that seem completely appropriate to the author's process of trying to document, understand, accept something that is unacceptable to her in a fundamental way. There's nothing cliched about the writing or the feelings Sarah Manguso describes; I kept being surprised and startled, and completely believing in the truth of what she writes. I think this book will stay with me for a long time. And I'm happy I own it, because I know I'll want to read it again.
On a sort of side note, one of the things I most appreciated about the book--along with Sarah Manguso's intense honesty, and her graceful writing--is the fact that it's about what many people would consider a "secondary" kind of relationship: a friendship, not a marriage or intimate partnership or familial relationship. At one point, the author writes about the difficulty and confusion of grieving someone who isn't family or her husband. To me, the book is a gorgeous illustration of how much those other relationships can matter, if we're lucky enough to have them (and the last word of the book is "lucky"); they can be as rich and deep and essential as the relationships that we're often told should take priority over them. Sarah Manguso says this way more beautifully in The Guardians, of course, without actually saying it.
July 12, 2023
I have no interest in hanging a true story on an artificial scaffolding of a plot, but what is the true story? My friend died- that isn't a story. p30
I didn't feel a thing. Not for years. p17
Sarah Manguso writes from heartbreak, from tragedy, from gathered wisdom. A good friend died and the light he brought into the world is transferred to the page in this tribute to their friendship. Did he fall or was he pushed by his inner demons who may have taken the form of Akathusia? This is a clinically (ill)defined medical condition (which can be a side effect of antipsychotic medication or some other neurological event) characterised by intolerable restlessness.
I am aware of accuracy as an abstract goal, but I don't know what it looks like or how to find it or how I would know it if I found it or what I would do if I did.p43
I have always gravitated to friends like Harris: funny, tender, creative, wise. A lot of these friends died early in the AIDS epidemic and over the decades there were overdoses, modern diseases; some did decide to suicide and some are now famous. I don't see much of them either.
This book is titled as an elegy and fittingly it is short, compressed with highlights. At he same time it is huge enough to encompass its subjects: life, loss, the mysterious threads of connection.
I often forget that I am a particle in a cosmic process that has nothing to do with human desire or justice. I forget that the world is chaos, that it is is incorruptible. p88
I didn't feel a thing. Not for years. p17
Sarah Manguso writes from heartbreak, from tragedy, from gathered wisdom. A good friend died and the light he brought into the world is transferred to the page in this tribute to their friendship. Did he fall or was he pushed by his inner demons who may have taken the form of Akathusia? This is a clinically (ill)defined medical condition (which can be a side effect of antipsychotic medication or some other neurological event) characterised by intolerable restlessness.
I am aware of accuracy as an abstract goal, but I don't know what it looks like or how to find it or how I would know it if I found it or what I would do if I did.p43
I have always gravitated to friends like Harris: funny, tender, creative, wise. A lot of these friends died early in the AIDS epidemic and over the decades there were overdoses, modern diseases; some did decide to suicide and some are now famous. I don't see much of them either.
This book is titled as an elegy and fittingly it is short, compressed with highlights. At he same time it is huge enough to encompass its subjects: life, loss, the mysterious threads of connection.
I often forget that I am a particle in a cosmic process that has nothing to do with human desire or justice. I forget that the world is chaos, that it is is incorruptible. p88
April 18, 2025
"No quiero admitir que no habría sido capaz de salvar a Harris de su muerte, que no soy mágica, ni especial, ni podría salvar a nadie. En el árbol los aguacates maduran y el sol reseca el jardín".
November 8, 2020
maybe my fav sarah manguso book. trying to solve the death of a friend in order to save them, to solve never-ending grief. but there is no clear equation, just guessing around abt what could've helped, and imagining dybbuks in the corner of rooms. manguso's love and devotion for her friend harris holds this book together like real flesh - i think we can all relate to how perfect it used to feel to stand on a train platform with a good friend, no hesitation or anxiety about when time will run out. when loved ones leave us with no warning, in that empty space, sometimes we fall for them harder.
Read
June 4, 2018I read this in one day, in couple of sittings, and I just didn’t get into it. I hate to say that a grief memoir left me cold, but it did. I’ve never lost a friend, so I’m going to hold onto it and perhaps it will mean more to me in future.
March 7, 2018
Manguso dissects her grief and friendship with gorgeous spare prose - this is 100 pages of pure, compressed power. Glorious.
September 23, 2013
In 2008 Manguso’s friend Harris, newly released from a mental hospital, jumped in front of a New York subway train. The previous ten hours, after a nurse opened the door for him, are unaccounted for. Manguso has come to believe that he was suffering from akathisia, a sort of unbearable all-over pins-and-needles feeling that makes people want to jump out of their skin (or jump out a window, or in front of a train, or commit a brutal murder). She had experienced a mild form of it after taking an antipsychotic drug that had also been prescribed for its anti-nausea properties.
This book is not a linear account of her friendship with Harris, or a journalistic attempt to document Harris’ illness or solve the mystery of his last hours. It’s instead a divergent series of vignettes from her life, Harris’ life, and their ten-year friendship. I have no problem with wandering, piecemeal memoirs, nor with the strategy of telling a life through tiny moments (e.g. Abigail Thomas’s Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life et al), but here Manguso’s fragments don’t add up to much.
I don’t feel I gained any insight into Harris’ life or illness; however, this may be a part of the point: proving that life is not a coherent narrative with a clear purpose and pattern (as Guardian reviewer Leo Robson notes here: “The intended effect is to kill off momentum, to deny a sense of comfortable, legible progress.”).
Nonetheless, this slim book felt light on content. For a truly great medical memoir, read Manguso's previous book, The Two Kinds of Decay - which I have also reviewed here.
(My favorite line was “Everyone alive on Earth is here, cheating death at every minute.”)
This book is not a linear account of her friendship with Harris, or a journalistic attempt to document Harris’ illness or solve the mystery of his last hours. It’s instead a divergent series of vignettes from her life, Harris’ life, and their ten-year friendship. I have no problem with wandering, piecemeal memoirs, nor with the strategy of telling a life through tiny moments (e.g. Abigail Thomas’s Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life et al), but here Manguso’s fragments don’t add up to much.
I don’t feel I gained any insight into Harris’ life or illness; however, this may be a part of the point: proving that life is not a coherent narrative with a clear purpose and pattern (as Guardian reviewer Leo Robson notes here: “The intended effect is to kill off momentum, to deny a sense of comfortable, legible progress.”).
Nonetheless, this slim book felt light on content. For a truly great medical memoir, read Manguso's previous book, The Two Kinds of Decay - which I have also reviewed here.
(My favorite line was “Everyone alive on Earth is here, cheating death at every minute.”)
March 6, 2014
Manguso, a fighter for the perfect and tiny and tight prose, is whirlwind of encouragement to work and always work and push to perfect writing. Having been to a craft talk and reading of hers, speaking to her of my own struggles as a writer, I look back on this book as an example of what I want my work to someday be compared to. I want my trials and tribulations worded so poignantly and clearly. I want someone to one day ask me, "How did you do it?" just as I did to Manguso.
She writes of her survivor's guilt when her friend Harris dies from jumping in front of a train after escaping a psych ward (his third admission to one). She feels partially responsible, unforgiving of herself for not noticing the signs and not being there for him when he needed her and everyone dear to him close by. It took her a few years to approach this event, too hard for her to touch and prod. But she fought through it, and you can see it in her writing: it is segmented, as if she is touching the pain and then baking off when it hurts too much.
I cannot wait to reread this book. And I look forward to meeting her again one day!
She writes of her survivor's guilt when her friend Harris dies from jumping in front of a train after escaping a psych ward (his third admission to one). She feels partially responsible, unforgiving of herself for not noticing the signs and not being there for him when he needed her and everyone dear to him close by. It took her a few years to approach this event, too hard for her to touch and prod. But she fought through it, and you can see it in her writing: it is segmented, as if she is touching the pain and then baking off when it hurts too much.
I cannot wait to reread this book. And I look forward to meeting her again one day!
February 21, 2016
"To claim oneself a writer when one is not a writer is an insult to writers, but to call oneself crazy when one is not crazy is an insult to crazy people. It belittles what they've accomplished." (91) -- As the title suggests this is in praise of a friend and of love. It is also in praise of the man who was sick and does not talk against his illness. This is a moving elegy about a woman's mourning and one of its biggest themes is journey and searching. Like Harris whose last ten hours consisted of walking Manguso writes in search of. She looks for closure, she looks for meaning, for coincidence, she especially looks for blame. Whether it's to blame herself, mental illness, psychotropic drugs, people, life, death, she writes and writes and writes in hopes that a thing will come out of this. That thing takes on the form of regret, of joy, of guilt and maybe resentment.
I loved this book. There were too many moments I softly gasped recognizing myself in her and her words. I'd imagine that there's no proper way to discuss a loved one's suicide but this comes pretty close.
I loved this book. There were too many moments I softly gasped recognizing myself in her and her words. I'd imagine that there's no proper way to discuss a loved one's suicide but this comes pretty close.
February 1, 2012
i thought this was so beautifully written.
it's about the death of Harris, a friend of the author, and even though it's a slight book, it also covers depression, intimacy, suicide, belonging, writing and 9/11.
it's a sad book about losing a friend 'It doesn't sound like much when I say my friend died. He wasn't my father or my son or my husband.'
I like how Manguso writes about grief:
'I can't measure my grief and I can't show anyone what color it is. I can offer testimony that others can reject or accept on faith, but my grief is always just my grief, unobservable by anyone but me, and then imperfectly. And maybe it isn't even grief anymore; maybe it's envy of people who aren't grieving, or shame that my grief is lasting so long when I'm not even part of Harris's family.'
The back of my proof copy compares it to Joan Didion's 'Year of Magical Thinking', which is kind of obvious but not far off - it has a similar writing style, but also felt much more raw.
it's about the death of Harris, a friend of the author, and even though it's a slight book, it also covers depression, intimacy, suicide, belonging, writing and 9/11.
it's a sad book about losing a friend 'It doesn't sound like much when I say my friend died. He wasn't my father or my son or my husband.'
I like how Manguso writes about grief:
'I can't measure my grief and I can't show anyone what color it is. I can offer testimony that others can reject or accept on faith, but my grief is always just my grief, unobservable by anyone but me, and then imperfectly. And maybe it isn't even grief anymore; maybe it's envy of people who aren't grieving, or shame that my grief is lasting so long when I'm not even part of Harris's family.'
The back of my proof copy compares it to Joan Didion's 'Year of Magical Thinking', which is kind of obvious but not far off - it has a similar writing style, but also felt much more raw.
January 29, 2021
This is as close to five star without me giving it that rating. The style of writing makes you want to just plow through, but don't. Each piece, whether paragraph or a few pages, is worth thinking about in its own right. The relationship with a friend that ends through suicide never really ends, though the echoes slowly fade.
June 12, 2016
The second book by Manguso that I have read. She is so good at brevity and emotional brutality. Like this is heartbreaking and so was Ongoingness: the End of a Diary. I think we share a lot of the same types of worries. Idk.
December 26, 2013
"Some parts of the story are gone, but they have left a heavy imprint, and even now I can detect the shape of what made it, the shape of what used to exist."
July 12, 2023
"L'amore rimane".
100 pagine di un libro intimo ed intenso.
100 pagine di un libro intimo ed intenso.
March 29, 2017
93 pagine che sono un condensato di dolore, amore, nostalgia, disperazione.
Non l'ho trovato molto distante dal nucleo profondo de "L' anno del pensiero magico" della Didion.
Il salto ti scava dentro con una prosa secca ma lirica, attraverso descrizioni che sono dei piccoli flash, isolati, anche graficamente, ma che assomigliano ai croccantini di cioccolato nello yougurt. Il dolce tuffato nella lattiginosa e densa crema acidula.
Un libro apparentemente ridotto all'osso come una poesia ermetica. In poco dice tutto.
E quel tutto tocca le nostre corde più profonde e ci porta con Harris sul binario dal quale ha spiccato il suo ultimo volo. Il suo salto
Non l'ho trovato molto distante dal nucleo profondo de "L' anno del pensiero magico" della Didion.
Il salto ti scava dentro con una prosa secca ma lirica, attraverso descrizioni che sono dei piccoli flash, isolati, anche graficamente, ma che assomigliano ai croccantini di cioccolato nello yougurt. Il dolce tuffato nella lattiginosa e densa crema acidula.
Un libro apparentemente ridotto all'osso come una poesia ermetica. In poco dice tutto.
E quel tutto tocca le nostre corde più profonde e ci porta con Harris sul binario dal quale ha spiccato il suo ultimo volo. Il suo salto
June 30, 2024
Manguso captures the emotions and questions that come with being a suicide loss survivor in a way that gave me an incredible amount of comfort. This book is so gorgeously written and provided me with a small amount of peace.
June 4, 2018
I love reading in bars and crying, see my highlights for some gems. Recommended to anyone who wants to explore grief and mental illness.
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