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The Glen Rock Book of the Dead
In her author’s note, Marion Winik writes that in Mexico on the Day of the Dead, “people build altars to their loved ones . . . they go to the cemetery and stay all night, praying, singing, drinking, wailing. They tell the sad stories and the noble ones; they eat cookies shaped like skeletons. They celebrate and mourn at once.” Striking that balance, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead presents snapshot portraits of The Jeweler, The Driving Instructor, The Bad Influence, The Queen of New Jersey—and roughly fifty others who have touched Winik’s life, from her son’s second grade teacher to Keith Haring. Tied together by the inimitable, poignant voice of Winik, these losses form not only an autobiography but a story of our time, delivering a lyrical journey that ultimately raises the spirits.
96 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2008
18 people are currently reading
456 people want to read
About the author
Marion Winik
29 books96 followersLongtime All Things Considered commentator Marion Winik is the author of First Comes Love, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead and seven other books. The Baltimore Book of the Dead is forthcoming from Counterpoint this fall. Her award-winning column on BaltimoreFishbowl.com appears monthly, and her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun and elsewhere. She is the host of The Weekly Reader radio show and podcast and reviews books for Newsday, People, and Kirkus Review. She is a board member of the National Book Critics Circle and a professor in the MFA program at the University of Baltimore. More info at marionwinik.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
January 31, 2011
This is one of those finds that I think bookstores and conversation are one of the few ways one could decide upon reading it. Its the quick glance inside that gets you and nails you to the wall. I wasn't even looking for this book. That's generally the way it happens when you find a great bookstore, you leave with your arms weighed down and your pocketbook vanquished. Something pushed it into my hands off the 'Rebecca Reccomends' shelf of Greenlight Bookstore in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn. I read Winik's intro and then the first story and then headed to the cashier.
I've just finished all of the remembrances in this extremely short book and I think you all should read this. It is particularly imperative if you'll ever die. These 'portraits of the dead' are inspired by the fictional vignettes of Edgar Lee Master's 'Spoon River Anthology' and yet a leap into the contemporary form. Every one is a deep insight into her life and the lives of many she came in touch. The writing is so spare and so crystal at times it as shocking as smashing down a glass of Grandma's favorite crystal at the dinner table.
Each of the portraits, drawn from her own rich experiences and those that have touched her life are spare yet concentrated reflection most only amounting to a few paragraphs at best, yet there always are these barbs and lines that stab up from the text and draw one forward, leaving a yearning for a deeper connection to this thing we call life and the other we are all ever spinning towards. Here are a few of my favorite moments, although the whole thing will fall into that realm. I'll probably read it again. It's the perfect book for a train ride, or whey are stadning on a corner waiting for a friend, or when you're sitting in the loo. Enjoy.
From 'The Second Grade Teacher' pg.66
"...I heard that C. Green had died of breast cancer, leaving young children of her own. It seemed impossible. Aren't elementary school teachers eternal and ageless--like Santa Claus--holding open the heavy steel doors to the future as the babbling river of children runs through and through."
From 'The Man of Letters' pg. 73
"Look, here we all are in the boardwalk at Bradley Beach, New Jersey, the summer my boys were one and three. The sun is an orange-brown pill bottle in the sky. Lounging on a beach, the men squint through the taffy air at little hands waving from the ferris wheel."
(this review originally appeared @ NYWBC )
If you are in the Brooklyn, NY area, or if you want to buy it online from an awesome small bookseller, hit up Greenlight Bookstore.
I've just finished all of the remembrances in this extremely short book and I think you all should read this. It is particularly imperative if you'll ever die. These 'portraits of the dead' are inspired by the fictional vignettes of Edgar Lee Master's 'Spoon River Anthology' and yet a leap into the contemporary form. Every one is a deep insight into her life and the lives of many she came in touch. The writing is so spare and so crystal at times it as shocking as smashing down a glass of Grandma's favorite crystal at the dinner table.
Each of the portraits, drawn from her own rich experiences and those that have touched her life are spare yet concentrated reflection most only amounting to a few paragraphs at best, yet there always are these barbs and lines that stab up from the text and draw one forward, leaving a yearning for a deeper connection to this thing we call life and the other we are all ever spinning towards. Here are a few of my favorite moments, although the whole thing will fall into that realm. I'll probably read it again. It's the perfect book for a train ride, or whey are stadning on a corner waiting for a friend, or when you're sitting in the loo. Enjoy.
From 'The Second Grade Teacher' pg.66
"...I heard that C. Green had died of breast cancer, leaving young children of her own. It seemed impossible. Aren't elementary school teachers eternal and ageless--like Santa Claus--holding open the heavy steel doors to the future as the babbling river of children runs through and through."
From 'The Man of Letters' pg. 73
"Look, here we all are in the boardwalk at Bradley Beach, New Jersey, the summer my boys were one and three. The sun is an orange-brown pill bottle in the sky. Lounging on a beach, the men squint through the taffy air at little hands waving from the ferris wheel."
(this review originally appeared @ NYWBC )
If you are in the Brooklyn, NY area, or if you want to buy it online from an awesome small bookseller, hit up Greenlight Bookstore.
March 2, 2019
Every chapter is a tiny little vignette about a person that Marion Winik knew who is now dead. Sometimes it's a close friend or relation, other times it's the town dentist. Some of these little stories hit me hard and others felt like a throw away page....and after reading a dozen they all started to blur together. This book is only 96 pages so you can read them all in one sitting but that doesn't do any of them justice. The fact that I can't remember these people lease me a little sadder than when I didn't know them at all.
August 19, 2011
Clever little book. Clever idea (one short chapter each for each person she's known who's died) and not macabre at all. In fact, it's alive. She's especially good at describing each person very quickly--in 30 or 50 words. In and out. And she picks nice moments to dramatize. I think that beginning creative nonfiction students could learn a lot from this on how to bring characters to life, quickly, on the page. Also, how to write a short, short essay about a person, with a point. Read this in about two hours.
March 6, 2020
I read Marion Winik's The Baltimore Book of the Dead last year and loved it. Loved the two-page essays of people I knew and people I didn't know who had touched Marion Winik's life before they passed away. For some reason, maybe multiple reasons, this book of two-page essays of people I didn't know hit me hard. Maybe it's the mounting ever-present fear of the coronavirus. Maybe it's the political events of this week and/or this year. Maybe it's the loss of my dad that I still haven't come to terms with. Maybe it's the way Marion would boil down a hard core truth in the last paragraph of each essay that left me breathless and awed.
In her essay of her brother-in-law "the Carpenter," she wrote:
"It-was-his-time-he-is-at-peace-he-is-free-from-pain-at-last. Who wants to hear these things? I'd rather take the whole last few years of his life, the addiction, the sickness, the breakup, crumple them up and hide them like a paper full of mistakes you don't want anyone to see. I miss him more, not less, as time goes by." No matter how many times I read that last sentence, it gets me ever time.
In her essay of "the Driving Instructor," it appears that Marion had a rocky relationship with her dad that resembles the relationship I had with my dad. She said "We used to say, Remember what an asshole he could be, but now we can't remember that anymore. What's left is the assholes we are." Damn.
In her essay of "the Baby," she describes the loss of her first son, who died a few days before he was due to be born. Somehow, Marion managed to turn that pain around when she described a mother's loss of her child, shot while attending college at Virginia Tech. Marion said, "Don't you see how lucky I was? If I had to lose him, at least it was before I knew him, before all my love poured out of me like milk. At least I could start over."
This tiny book is no easy, light read. I recommend it to anyone who is willing to grapple with the ghosts in their head.
In her essay of her brother-in-law "the Carpenter," she wrote:
"It-was-his-time-he-is-at-peace-he-is-free-from-pain-at-last. Who wants to hear these things? I'd rather take the whole last few years of his life, the addiction, the sickness, the breakup, crumple them up and hide them like a paper full of mistakes you don't want anyone to see. I miss him more, not less, as time goes by." No matter how many times I read that last sentence, it gets me ever time.
In her essay of "the Driving Instructor," it appears that Marion had a rocky relationship with her dad that resembles the relationship I had with my dad. She said "We used to say, Remember what an asshole he could be, but now we can't remember that anymore. What's left is the assholes we are." Damn.
In her essay of "the Baby," she describes the loss of her first son, who died a few days before he was due to be born. Somehow, Marion managed to turn that pain around when she described a mother's loss of her child, shot while attending college at Virginia Tech. Marion said, "Don't you see how lucky I was? If I had to lose him, at least it was before I knew him, before all my love poured out of me like milk. At least I could start over."
This tiny book is no easy, light read. I recommend it to anyone who is willing to grapple with the ghosts in their head.
August 11, 2011
I like the concept of this book--writing short essays about people the author met who had died. The essays were beautifully written. But you couldn't read too many at once or they all started to blend together. You had to read this book slowly, a few essays at a time.
May 8, 2011
Wonderful book; great for reading slowly or in one go. I use "The Realtor" as an example of masterful exposition in my creative writing classes.
February 6, 2024
This book is a series of essays about dead people the author has known and her connection to them during their lives. I found it interesting and thought provoking. However, I didn’t like some of the crude language, adult situations and profanity.
April 26, 2016
This series of portraits of people Winik has known or who touched her life in some way, and who have died, is beautifully written. She names these people with labels: The Showgirl (her step-grandmother), The Skater (her first husband), The Bad Influence (a friend of her son's), The Driving Instructor (her father), The Big Sister. Thus we are presented with archetypes who are at once marvelously specific, described with crystalline details. There is nothing maudlin about it. There is even a beautiful description of a house, destroyed in Hurricane Katrina.
The strong point for me of this collection of fifty-one small pieces (only a couple span more than two pages) is the way she attempts to describe the feelings that death leaves us with.
Of The Clown (a short-time lover), she writes: "Perhaps the real memory, the memory I'm still looking for, is not accessible this way [by trying to recall the details]. Perhaps it is heat, pressure, cells. The purple blooms on the morning glory vine outside my window, lit neon by the sun. Already closed the second time I look."
Or this, about The Bon Vivant (the friend of a friend, who had found his mother's body when he was nine, and thirty years later committed suicide himself): "When he left us, it was like taking Saturday out of the week or May off the calendar, and yet somehow we had to get used to it. If anyone knew this, it was [him]. . . . I am sure he was counting on it."
Or The Baby (her first, stillborn): "The only thing I knew was what I'd learned at my job writing computer manuals: when some mysterious awful thing happens and the whole document disappears, you have to open a new file and start over. That is all you can do. Twenty years later, I don't have any better ideas. . . . Don't you see how lucky I was? If I had to lose him, at least it was before I knew him, before all my love poured out of me like milk. At least I could still start over."
Then again, she also says this: "I don't know how the hell we go on, knowing what we know."
This is a short book, a quick read but a rich one.
The strong point for me of this collection of fifty-one small pieces (only a couple span more than two pages) is the way she attempts to describe the feelings that death leaves us with.
Of The Clown (a short-time lover), she writes: "Perhaps the real memory, the memory I'm still looking for, is not accessible this way [by trying to recall the details]. Perhaps it is heat, pressure, cells. The purple blooms on the morning glory vine outside my window, lit neon by the sun. Already closed the second time I look."
Or this, about The Bon Vivant (the friend of a friend, who had found his mother's body when he was nine, and thirty years later committed suicide himself): "When he left us, it was like taking Saturday out of the week or May off the calendar, and yet somehow we had to get used to it. If anyone knew this, it was [him]. . . . I am sure he was counting on it."
Or The Baby (her first, stillborn): "The only thing I knew was what I'd learned at my job writing computer manuals: when some mysterious awful thing happens and the whole document disappears, you have to open a new file and start over. That is all you can do. Twenty years later, I don't have any better ideas. . . . Don't you see how lucky I was? If I had to lose him, at least it was before I knew him, before all my love poured out of me like milk. At least I could still start over."
Then again, she also says this: "I don't know how the hell we go on, knowing what we know."
This is a short book, a quick read but a rich one.
December 18, 2012
First of all, this is such a beautiful book. I love the design inside and out. The concept is also wonderful -- a page and a half or so honoring each of the deaths in Marion Winik's life. The writing is heartfelt with undertones of humor and sadness.
May 25, 2009
Short, sweet, brief, deep in all the right ways.
November 2, 2023
The Glen Rock Book of the Dead, by Marion Winik, is a moving book that makes you smile often. She writes fast, well-clipped sentences, describing each person. We get a picture through time of some of the big milestones of death: AIDS, school shootings, 9/11, car crashes, suicide. Each of 51 short chapters, most at two pages, is titled with a noun. (i.e. The Neighbor, The Eye Doctor, The Jeweler, The Clown, etc.)
She's lost husbands, children, family. She's had an interesting life which shines through these people she knew. Marion Winik is known for her memoir about her marriage to a gay man who died of AIDS. She grew up in our times and her writing skill brings it forth in this brilliant book. It started with a writing exercise in a workshop with Jane McCafferty in 2007 (from the author note at the beginning of the book). The ghosts presented themselves and she wrote them down.
The artwork in the book is perfect, two small characters on the front: a fully dressed victorian man holding a cane, and a skeleton behind him arrow raised ready to pierce him to death; each chapter has a small icon for it's "subject." A gem of a book. You will laugh and feel.
She's lost husbands, children, family. She's had an interesting life which shines through these people she knew. Marion Winik is known for her memoir about her marriage to a gay man who died of AIDS. She grew up in our times and her writing skill brings it forth in this brilliant book. It started with a writing exercise in a workshop with Jane McCafferty in 2007 (from the author note at the beginning of the book). The ghosts presented themselves and she wrote them down.
The artwork in the book is perfect, two small characters on the front: a fully dressed victorian man holding a cane, and a skeleton behind him arrow raised ready to pierce him to death; each chapter has a small icon for it's "subject." A gem of a book. You will laugh and feel.
November 4, 2018
I love how I got to know the author and her deceased associates. Really short, sweet, profound sentiments.
February 21, 2025
The great reading slump of 2025 ends today. Cheers
August 28, 2015
Lovely work similar to "Spoon River Anthology." Some of the best pieces are about the folks who were only in her life for a short period of time. It was as if the distance gave her greater perspective and allowed her to write beautiful prose. The pieces about her loved ones were too close, like she was trying to make me love them rather than simply letting me see them as they were and making up my own mind.
There are several that will break your heart in two and leave you lingering over the details of their stories. None of the pieces are more than 700-800 words long, but using such an abbreviated form doesn't limit the author at all. She uses such precise language and imagery that fewer words are actually better. A stunning example of less is more.
There are several that will break your heart in two and leave you lingering over the details of their stories. None of the pieces are more than 700-800 words long, but using such an abbreviated form doesn't limit the author at all. She uses such precise language and imagery that fewer words are actually better. A stunning example of less is more.
September 7, 2016
3.75 stars. The book consists of 2- or 3-page stories, each about someone's death, like a contemporary Spoon River Anthology. Some of these vignettes are perfect gems; others aren't as clear. The book is not involving in a large sense since each little story is separate, but some of them involve different family members that build on each other. I'm glad I read the book, but am also glad it was short.
March 1, 2009
My initial reaction is to call this book a short, fun, and playful read. But a book filled with obituaries of people Marion Winik has known is not fun or playful, right? She did right by these people and has laid them to rest in these obituaries.
August 5, 2012
Winik does an incredible job of telling her story through the deaths of those she knew in one way or another. A creative way to set up a memoir. The nicknames she gives her "characters" makes it easy to follow her intertwining stories.
July 24, 2014
Micro essays about dead people that sometimes almost feel like a bus load of prose poems collided into a classroom full of obituaries, this book is a delight in small doses (I want to use some of these in the classroom!), but read straight through they get a bit monotonous, particularly in tone.
July 21, 2014
Still Winik's best work. A total pleasure and an absolute heartbreak to read.
December 21, 2024
Marion Winik’s The Glen Rock Book of the Dead is approximately 50 brief, jewel-like portraits memorializing (if not nearly resurrecting)individuals who have touched her life. Inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead traditions, where mourning and celebration dance together, Winik writes about people she’s known intimately and fleetingly. She flays open lives in just a handful of paragraphs, with warmth, precision, and dazzling compassion.
And oh, holy hell. Sometimes your new favorite book waits quietly, unremarkable in a groaning TBR pile. What a delight this book is. You will feel things you are unprepared to feel about the lives of people you don’t know and whose names you may never find out. Winik doesn’t so much write as she casts spells, allowing entire lives to unfold in under two pages. Each life is “introduced” in vibrant entrances, and their passing takes a back seat to their living. Each subject arriving fully realized, their deaths present but secondary to their lives. Winik seems more interested in how they lived and how our lives imprint on one another.
There is warmth here, and ferocity. There is compassion, too, and an unwavering sense of curiosity. What does it mean to remember someone? What does it mean to be remembered? These are the questions Winik circles, never directly, but with every story she tells.
It confronts pain and disappointment, isolation and failure, but it also finds joy, community, and the unyielding mystery of what it all means. The reader is left wondering what their own two-page version would look like. Disappointment? Pain? Trying to shield myself and my kids from it all, succeeding in some places, failing in others? That’s part of the story. But Winik reminds us that we get to write our own. And that pain? That joy? It’s real. It’s messy. It’s what makes life worth remembering. And it leaves you hoping, above all, that when your story is told, someone notices. Someone remembers. Because, damn it, you mattered. All of you. Your pain and your triumph.
These aren’t obituaries — they’re titrated snapshots of life, love, and the lingering weight of loss. is uplifting even as it wounds, surprising in its candor and its grace.
May we all be remembered like this.
This one is a stunner and you can expect to see it on my “Favorite Reads of 2024.”
And oh, holy hell. Sometimes your new favorite book waits quietly, unremarkable in a groaning TBR pile. What a delight this book is. You will feel things you are unprepared to feel about the lives of people you don’t know and whose names you may never find out. Winik doesn’t so much write as she casts spells, allowing entire lives to unfold in under two pages. Each life is “introduced” in vibrant entrances, and their passing takes a back seat to their living. Each subject arriving fully realized, their deaths present but secondary to their lives. Winik seems more interested in how they lived and how our lives imprint on one another.
There is warmth here, and ferocity. There is compassion, too, and an unwavering sense of curiosity. What does it mean to remember someone? What does it mean to be remembered? These are the questions Winik circles, never directly, but with every story she tells.
It confronts pain and disappointment, isolation and failure, but it also finds joy, community, and the unyielding mystery of what it all means. The reader is left wondering what their own two-page version would look like. Disappointment? Pain? Trying to shield myself and my kids from it all, succeeding in some places, failing in others? That’s part of the story. But Winik reminds us that we get to write our own. And that pain? That joy? It’s real. It’s messy. It’s what makes life worth remembering. And it leaves you hoping, above all, that when your story is told, someone notices. Someone remembers. Because, damn it, you mattered. All of you. Your pain and your triumph.
These aren’t obituaries — they’re titrated snapshots of life, love, and the lingering weight of loss. is uplifting even as it wounds, surprising in its candor and its grace.
May we all be remembered like this.
This one is a stunner and you can expect to see it on my “Favorite Reads of 2024.”
June 4, 2017
I heard about this book through my book club. Marion Winik lives in our neighborhood and apparently attended one of the book club meetings to read some excerpts from one of her books recently (alas, it was before I joined) . So I went on a slight Winik binge and bought all of her books and whizzed through them. This one is interesting, it is very short essays (vignettes?) only a page per subject...of all of the people she has known who have died. Some are close relatives, but others are classmates of her son, neighbors, parents at school....it had a "six degrees of separation" feel, as some stories were clearly people she knew well and other essays dealt with people she did not know, but heard of their passing. As I spoke with someone in my book club, we realized that we could all write a Glen Rock book...as you pass through life and love and lose people. Intriguing book and not as depressing as it sounds.
November 21, 2018
tiny snapshots from the lives—and deaths—of people connected, however tenuously or deeply personally, to the author + mundane moments made fascinating, the harrowing faced head-on + poignant, wry, honest
⚰️
“It-was-his-time-he-is-at-peace-he-is-free-from-pain-at-last. Who wants to hear these things? I’d rather take the whole last few years of his life, the addiction, the sickness, the breakup, crumple them up and hide them like a paper full of mistakes you don’t want anyone to see. I miss him more, not less, as time goes by.”
⚰️
“I heard that C. Green had died of breast cancer, leaving young children of her own. It seemed impossible. Aren’t elementary school teachers eternal and ageless—like Santa Claus—holding open the heavy steel doors to the future as the babbling river of children runs through and through?”
⚰️
instagram book reviews @brettlikesbooks
⚰️
“It-was-his-time-he-is-at-peace-he-is-free-from-pain-at-last. Who wants to hear these things? I’d rather take the whole last few years of his life, the addiction, the sickness, the breakup, crumple them up and hide them like a paper full of mistakes you don’t want anyone to see. I miss him more, not less, as time goes by.”
⚰️
“I heard that C. Green had died of breast cancer, leaving young children of her own. It seemed impossible. Aren’t elementary school teachers eternal and ageless—like Santa Claus—holding open the heavy steel doors to the future as the babbling river of children runs through and through?”
⚰️
instagram book reviews @brettlikesbooks
January 3, 2019
Haunting and though provoking
The unusual format of this book, appropriately 2-3 pages about individuals whose death the author remembers, ranging from an eye doctor when she was 10 to her first husband and first child. I think it’s a book that will stay with me and require rereading. Her new book in the same format is Baltimore Book of the Dead, which I heard Ann Patchett review on NPR
The unusual format of this book, appropriately 2-3 pages about individuals whose death the author remembers, ranging from an eye doctor when she was 10 to her first husband and first child. I think it’s a book that will stay with me and require rereading. Her new book in the same format is Baltimore Book of the Dead, which I heard Ann Patchett review on NPR
February 22, 2019
I was surprised that the entries were so short, a small page or two about each person. I was also surprised that someone would know so many people who died from AIDS or from drugs. The book started out slowly for me but, as it went on, the stories became interconnected and more powerful. It made me think about all the people who have touched my life and who have died. I think I would like to read this book again in the near future. I think I might appreciate it more on a second go.
November 26, 2020
Not to take anything at all away from this collection, but I'd read Winik's 'Baltimore Book of the Dead" years ago and found it to be a work of genius. Because I'm a woman of a certain age, the people of Glen Rock seemed more real as I've also known the loss of these big and small lives. Winik's circle in "Glen Rock" wasn't lesser in any way, just younger, in both the lost lives and Winik's own perspective.
November 11, 2017
Winik does an unusual march through her life doing a small tribute to all those who impacted her life in her small town of Glen Rock, PA.
This book was well written and enjoyable, though a bit dark in that all you begin to read about made the book because they died. It made me reflect on how blessed I have been to not have more grief in my life.
This book was well written and enjoyable, though a bit dark in that all you begin to read about made the book because they died. It made me reflect on how blessed I have been to not have more grief in my life.
June 10, 2019
Marion Winik says a great deal in two pages, the typical length of the essays in this potent and incisive collection. Each piece describes someone whom Winik knew who has died, and she selects the details with a care that, collectively, tells us as much about her as it does about the subjects themselves.
A small gem of a book.
A small gem of a book.
July 6, 2019
You'd think this would be the perfect book for me. Short little 2 page obituaries of people who were in her life. In between these short obits you learn bits and pieces of the authors life - her drug use, marriage to a gay man, and other information about her family - but not enough to know what happened in her life. How these people touched her life, I have no idea.
April 25, 2025
A collection of very brief remembrances of fifty-one deceased people who had an impact on the life of Marion Winik. That sounds like a series of obits, but far from it. These are beautifully crafted portraits in miniature, funny, insightful, sad, surprising, and strange, sometimes all at once. I love this book.
April 18, 2021
This one was recommended by Cheryl Strayed on her podcast. It definitely reads in the style of Strayed’s advice columns.
Poignant and short stories about people the author knew who died. Each person is celebrated for the intricate details of their life and personalities.
Poignant and short stories about people the author knew who died. Each person is celebrated for the intricate details of their life and personalities.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews