Widow: Stories

by Michelle Latiolais

BELIEVER BOOK AWARD FINALIST
“In prose shimmering with intelligence and compassion, Michelle Latiolais dissects the essentials of everyday life to find the heartbeat within.”—Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

“Widow is a hymn to reverence, simultaneously heartbroken and celebratory. Michelle Latiolais has given us the rarest item, a splendidly articulated masterpiece.” —William Kittredge

“In this luminous collection of stories, the gifted Michelle Latiolais writes of loss in all its surprising manifestations. Widow is a devastation and a wonder.” —Christine Schutt

“There is something mysterious about this book, as there always is in the writing that matters most. It eludes explanation. It illumines terrifying realities. Only because these pages seem nakedly willing to take the imprint of every emotion, no matter how ugly, do they possess this great beauty.” —Elizabeth Tallent

The stories of Widow conjure the nuances of inner sensations as if hitting the notes of a song, deftly played across human memory. These meditations bravely explore the physiology of grief through a masterful interweaving of tender insight and unflinching detail—reminding us that the inner life is best understood through the medium of storytelling. Among these stories of loss are interwoven other tales, creating a bridge to the ineffable pleasures and follies of life before the catastrophe. Throughout this collection, Latiolais captures the longing, humor, and strange grace that accompany life’s most transformative chapters.

Michelle Latiolais is the author of Widow: Stories, a New York Times Editor's Choice selection, and two previous novels, including A Proper Knowledge, also published by Bellevue Literary Press. She is the recipient of the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California and an English professor and co-director of the Programs in Writing at the University of California at Irvine.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Michelle Latiolais, the author of the short story collection Widow: Stories and the novels A Proper Knowledge and Even Now, is an English professor and codirector of the Programs in Writing at the University of California at Irvine.

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This yodel of rapture, I mean review!, has been revised and can now be found at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud.

Don't you love discovering books because of other books?

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a legend of the thorn bird; as it impales itself and dies, it rises above its own agony to outsing the lark and the nightingale and the whole world stills to listen. As humans face death – our own or our most beloved – the best writers have the ability to rise up and eloquently sing. I speak, of course, of Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking, of Francisco Goldman in Say Her Name, of David Vann in Legend of a Suicide. And now, Michelle Latiolais takes her place in that very top tier of talented writers.

Ms. Latiolais masterly interweaves stories of life after her husband Paul’s death with other tales: the complex eroticism experienced by a woman visiting a male strip club with her lover, the trials of traveling to Africa with an anthropologist husband who is researching the unusual eating habits of aboriginals, young children who entice an ancient aunt to craft shapes out of moistened bread crumbs. In a few sparse words, she is able to capture a deep and complex emotion.

Take the eponymous title story. Ms. Latiolais writes, “Sometimes wandering is not better; it’s the horror of having no place she is going, no place he needs her to be, wants her to be, no one wanting her the way he wanted her. Then she sleeps, long blacked-out hours, her head beneath pillows, the quilt, and when she wakes, her pink pearls, sinuous on the vanity, comfort her…”

Or her story Crazy, when it dawns on a wife that her husband – a drama professor – is unfaithful: “Benson knew an audience at his back when he had one, and he never touched her, never even leaned down to kiss her on the cheek—blameless—but this was how she, his wife in the window, knew. All theater people hugged and kissed all the time. They were crazy for it.”

Tales of loss and betrayal – true and fictionalized – are interspersed with sensuous tales and images, of pink porcelain saucers with earthenware lips folded in and fluted out, spawning erotic fantasies…of exotic meals of lamb stew with garlic and baby lima beans, ladled over buttered couscous…of fine fabrics…of longing.

And throughout, Ms. Latiolais reveals a love affair with words, the aural and etymological echoes , the mouth-sounds, the ravishing beauty. This is a writer who reflects on her wording (and whose characters do as well) and who also understands the limitations of words when strong emotions render them useless.
The writing positively pulsates with pain and beauty, with heartbreak and reverence, with alienation and survival. In short, it is stunning writing, courageous writing; as Ms. Latiolais dances and weaves her way through her grief, it is only in the last story, Damned Spot, that we, her readers, learn the reality of Paul’s death. By then, we are invested enough so that our hearts shatter into little pieces.

Some of the pieces in this collection were written long before Paul died; others were written in response to his death. All provide compassionate insight and flinching detail and position Ms. Latiolais as a writer to be reckoned with.

[Christine Palau · Rating 5 out of 5]

17 stories in 157 pages, and yet it took me about 20 days to read. Each story (Widow, The Long Table, Boys, Tattoo, Pink, Place, The Moon, Crazy, Involution, Caduceus, Thorns, Gut, Hoarding, The Legal Case Breathe, Burqa, and Damned Spot) is so powerful and alive that it was hard to read more than one a day. There's something about Latiolais's writing--and the voice of her narrators--that you should experience slowly to fully appreciate. Part of it is probably the need to catch your breath and collect yourself.

This book is unapologetically feminine which is not to say it's chick lit or flowery. The sadness it evokes is raw, and you don't have to be a widow or even a woman to appreciate it. You do have to love language and meaning, words and sounds, and care about why we say, think, and do what we do.

But sorrow isn’t the only thing emanating from Widow, there's an equal amount sensuality--it’s downright sultry at times--especially in contrast to Gravity's Rainbow. (With all the bananas and rockets probing into my mind, it was a relief to have some images of oysters and anemones.) The honest dirtiness of real-life unions penetrates most of these stories, and even gave me a greater appreciation for the testosterone surging throughout GR. As I finish Latiolais, I'm entering part two of Pynchon more hormonally balanced. And though I've never lost anyone I've loved, now I feel like I have.

[Payton Lin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her writing style is so AGGRESSIVE. Her words rupture through the seams of each page as if her arms are lashing out at the reader, her bony hands violently thrashing about with the intention of clasping your jugular and then squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze..............

Aaaaarrrrggghhh!!!

[Amy Neftzger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michelle Latiolais has a different approach to writing short stories, and anyone looking for an action-packed adventure will be disappointed. This is highly reflective work seeping with thoughtful passages and poignancy. She’s adept at writing about individual moments that reflect and summarize greater life experiences. The best way to describe this book in a single word would be to call it “pithy.” It’s rich and thoughtful, incredibly well written, and a joy to read.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please find this, buy it, and read it in support of strong writing without an ounce of sentiment, but with plenty of feeling, on the matter of widowhood (among other topics).

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

The very first story was heartbreaking. The stories are typically linked but not every one of them is about the same character. I felt as though I were experiencing the character's grief, it was that powerful. This is a book to reread. I think of people who have lost a spouse. I remember one friend describing, or trying to describe, some of these moments. Words fail. But not for this author. It makes me think she is writing about her own life, her own losses. If so, even more astonishing, that she could find the words and be willing to publish them.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book nails what it is like to grieve, without whining. Autobiographical shorts, mixed in with fiction shorts ~ Latiolais has a way of putting consciousness down on paper that explores feminine principals, rather than letting a stream take you all over the place without getting to a point. Latiolais definitely hits the gut, but makes the reader smile as the discomfort settles in. An enjoyable and mentally stimulating read. Definitely one I will revisit without too much time lapsing between reads.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love story collections about serious subjects that retain a sense of humor but also don't trivialize the sadness. A couple of the stories left me a little confused, albeit in a good way. Latiolais strikes just the right balance here and--be warned--the final story will leave a permanent lump in your throat.

[Rob Forteath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of this collection is the internal narrative of a woman (who differs in particulars from story to story) who has suffered the sudden loss of her husband during the prime of their lives. She is painfully aware of the stereotypes of "the widow", aware of her own growing isolation, aware of how she is losing the ability to interact socially, and maybe not entirely aware of how her attempts to keep her negativity behind a glass wall are not successful.

It is hard for me to imagine writing a series of stories, each about the woeful ruminations of the same protagonist, while somehow managing to keep it all from becoming tedious. I tried to keep that in mind while I was moving through this collection, but there were still days when I looked at the book and just couldn't bring myself to pick it up again. I am glad I did, because the overall effect is to open up the internal life of someone who, in most stories, would be quickly mentioned in passing as a figure of generic pity.

"All the lonely people -- where do they all come from?" (Eleanor Rigby, The Beatles) ... now we have a partial answer for at least one of them.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories begin and end anywhere and anyhow they want to - Latiolais just follows an idea, image, question. I never felt the wistful yearning for more that I experience after reading other short stories. Some are extremely short - two or three pages - but these bear the same weight as the longer ones, if not more. The ordering of the stories is carefully done - creating a gradually building, yet meandering larger story, creating a pattern and a sort of vacuum, an emptiness. The theme of widowhood is intertwined throughout the collection, although many stories have nothing ostensibly to do with that - they are at different stages of different women's life spans and elicit a tangible feeling of loss, keening, exploration, and quotidian life in the face of death. Each story follows a metaphor (or two) through to a semi-completion. "Breathe," for example, is a sort of meditation on natural fibers - linen and cotton - and the significance of their replacement by nylons and other synthetics (sounds bizarre for story, but it works). Within the story a character refuses to pick up the phone to speak to her husband on the answering machine, but her refusal is made "not maliciously, not particularly peevishly either but, rather, just thinks that she will think this for such a time as will allow a small refusal to cooperate. She loves him enough that occasionally, very occasionally, she must refuse him, must take herself away from his needs and desires and hold herself up before herself, must find where seams have frayed, buttons cracked, must smooth away the wrinkles and pattern once again how she fits within herself." I love that metaphor. Every story in the collection was beautiful and strange and quietly profound.

[Mary Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This came in the mail, recommended by the only person whose opinions I take to heart. And so, clouded with affection and a tiny bit of long distance loneliness, I immediately adored this book. Now a week later, upon further consideration, I am certain the book is actually worthy of such adoration. Latiolais's lithesome command of language is electrifying.

[Midwest Geek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this is technically a collection of short stories, it reads more like a novella describing the state of mind and experiences of a character. They involve reflections by a woman who lost her husband 7 years earlier after 18 years of marriage, although not all stories take place after he died. Mild spoiler: There are hints that he died as a result of medical malpractice, perhaps in the administration of some drug. The prose is both powerful and elegant, although I can understand that it may be difficult to digest, even depressing. I really began to feel for this lonely woman pondering what to do with the rest of her life. The last story will probably knock you back; it did me.

I want to reread it sometime; something I say about few books. However, I would not recommend it to someone who recently lost a loved one.

[Edward Hamlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing collection of thoughtful, at times somewhat eccentric stories on the general theme of widowhood. The stories strike a fine balance between being meditative and grounded in the worldly, with frank and sometimes very raw emotion connecting them throughout. There is grieving here aplenty, but also backward-looking celebrations of good marriages, first flirtations with future husbands, rich evenings with friends sitting around tables laden with delicious food. (I appreciated the recipes tossed off in passing.)

I admired the prose throughout the book, but even more than this the pervasive intelligence of the narrative voices, always searching, often insightful, intelligent to a fault. I hadn't encountered this author before, but after reading the very first story immediately ordered her other work—the voice was that compelling.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the honor of taking Michelle’s creative writing workshop at UC Irvine. This collection has been on my TBR list far too long, and it was really nice to spend this time with her all these years later. Grief is a hell of a beast to tackle and damn. She did just that.

[Willow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favourite story in the collection - Damned Spot

[Deborah Lott · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this collection of memoirish stories, Latiolais describes events surrounding a narrator who has lost her husband suddenly to suicide. She alternates first person and third person, degrees of fiction and nonfiction, as if to say that there is no narrative form that can accommodate this reality. Even in the midst of heartbreak, this writer is never reduced to sentimentality or cliche. The language is always striking and beautiful and wholly original. I just have to quote from the opening of her piece entitled "Hoarding." "She now understands the Cat Woman, a staple of every neighborhood, the woman who lives alone with a dozen cats, or two dozen, the house sending up a reek that can be smelled from the sidewalk -- this is a person she understands something about now, when perhaps she hadn't before. She does not like cats, has never liked cats, but widowhood redefined companionship, and so she has bees now, and mice, and possums and rats and squirrels and spiders, and she will not spray them into oblivion, or allow them to be sprayed into oblivion."

[Noemí Lowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thematically charged...obviously. Latiolais deals with death, loneliness and the definitions people put on others based on circumstances largely outside of any control. Latiolais is a lovely writer and there really aren't any duds in this small collection.

The one thing I would say is that she doesn't write very "close" to her characters. The distance of her writing tends to alienate the reader from her characters, just as her characters, lost in their own insular thoughts, are alienated from their surroundings and their supporting cast. It's hard not to read much of the author in how her characters often judge others for not understanding their intellectualism. I love how intelligent her characters are, but I kept wondering if their judgement of "non-intellectuals" in the stories was a result of the authors own prejudices.

[Sweetmongoose · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an artfully written collection. Very moving. Smooth prose, poetic in places, experimental in others. Precise, sensitive. The theme of grief is sometimes hard to read - but it is ultimately worthwhile (so I felt as a reader). There are places where happy or uplifting moments come through, but this isn't a book of epiphany or "getting through and feeling better". I very much liked the recurring theme of love in marriage - relationships that matter and sustain and nourish - thus, the death of the husband is devasting to the narrator recurring in several stories. The last story's main character is the couple's dog - a really good story - joyful and sad and moving, well told.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my second attempt at this slim volume of stories, many more vignettes than narratives. I still found it hard going at first. I felt discomfited by the deep interiority and prickliness, and impatient for more narrative drive. By the end I was full of admiration for the writing, and also devastated. I finished the last story at the end of a commute to work. I had to sit and take some breaths before entering the office. I wanted to savior and integrate the beauty, pain and intensity rather than scurry away to the next thing.

The NYT review says everything I felt this collection: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/boo...

[Belinda Rule · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did a workshop with Michelle Latiolais at Squaw Valley Community of Writers a couple of years ago!

The stories that treat widowhood in this collection, especially the title story, are absolutely explosively good in their evocation of grieving a significant death - the way that you become literally physically ill; the way that the entire subject of your identity becomes unbearable to discuss.

I am a long-term single person, and many of these stories led me to reflect on how different my life is to that of long-term coupled people.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of poignant, raw, and poetic prose that is a delight to read. Latiolais' word choice shows attention to sound and surprises me at every turn. She occupies the internal thoughts, memories, and political musings of those experiencing grief and life. Most of the stories are in present tense and some of the pieces are memoir. Her explorations of the human brain and heart in crisis remind me how complex our emotional experience of the world can be.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories of loss in this book ring true. I know widows, parents who have suffered the death of children, sons and daughters day-by-day experiencing the loss of their parents to dementia. The pain and struggle to cope manifests itself in a multitude of ways and are succintly and viscerally cast in Widow Stories. I also recommend "Cheating At Canasta" by William Trevor.

[Donna Jo Atwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

These short stories are all over the place. The mood is bittersweet/melancholy in many of them and a lot of them are very stream of conciousness. Some of them were more to the point than others. I'm very glad I didn't read them right after I became a widow.

[Rebecca Stimpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

this comes ever so close to reading like it's been labored over. instead, it's fucking mindblowing. just read the story "pink" - it's shorter than an adequate review of this book would be. read it five times. then read the rest.

[Tanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read many of these short and micro stories, and I thoroughly enjoyed most of them. "Widow" is my favorite. It brings crystalline insight to women. A couple of the micro-stories felt obscure and poetic. Overall, a lovely read.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short stories...the first one I read is outstanding. The author is a master of language.

[Sian Jones]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/boo...

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked this quite a bit. A few stories were weaker than the others which is the only thing that prevented me from giving this four stars. Will definitely look out for other things she writes.

[Liza]

I don't know what is wrong with me, but I found this book almost offensively boring!