Speak MEMORY

Two authors consider resilience in memoirs of mourning— one a divorce, the other a dear friend's death

JOHN DONNE WROTE that "no man is an island," Sartre that "hell is other people"—two ways of describing our intrinsic entanglement with each other, us humans. Leslie Jamison's Splinters (Little, Brown) and Sloane Crosley's Grief Is for People (MCD/FSG) tender another two takes. In Splinters, Jamison braids the at times volcanic dissolution of her marriage, her overwhelming love for her infant daughter (even as she yearns to return to unfettered art making), and the memory of her parents' own split—turning a keen eye on how both she and her ex-husband foundered, offering grace for each party. In the droll and poignant Grief, Crosley (a VF contributor) confronts two calamities that occur a month apart: A thief steals her jewelry and her closest friend dies. What might seem like a conflation of disproportionate events becomes a bridge toward closure—or rather, the understanding that closure is just a story we tell ourselves. Though it's loss that these books grapple with, the pages brim with life.

KEZIAH WEIR