The Art of Death

March 27, 2017
In the latest installment of Graywolf’s the Art Of series, Danticat (Claire of the Sea Light) tackles a complex subject that reverberates throughout her award-winning fiction. She seeks to “both better understand death and offload fear of it” through the experience of dealing with the deaths of friends and family members, and through the works of writers past and present, from Leo Tolstoy to Ta-Nehisi Coates. She highlights—and perhaps achieves—the writer’s desire to “help others feel less alone.” For Danticat, death is not an isolated phenomenon. Everything in our lives, and in the fiction we read and write, is informed by our knowledge of the inevitability of life’s end: “Even when we are not writing about death, we are writing about death.” Danticat pursues two major goals here, and they dovetail gracefully. In a series of linked essays on overlapping topics such as suicide, close calls, and how we relate to catastrophic events, she both shows how great writers make death meaningful, and explores her own raw grief over her mother’s death. This slim volume wraps literary criticism, philosophy, and memoir into a gracefully circling whole, echoing the nature of grief as “circles and circles of sorrow.”

Starred review from June 1, 2017
A guide to writing--and reading--about death.National Book Critics Circle Award winner Danticat (Claire of the Sea Light, 2013, etc.) adds to "The Art of" series with this work on how writers approach the topics of death and dying. Though the book is slim, it is overarching and broad in scope. Drawing on an array of writers, Danticat presents a wide range of approaches to death, including her own. Having written extensively about her mother's death, for which she was present, the author lends a deeply personal touch to this study. She truly finds her stride after first surrounding readers with the almost impossible depth of her topic. Though not tied to a structure, Danticat explores the varieties of death and how each one is approached by writers. Suicide, execution, natural death, and accidental death all receive attention. Collective deaths also play a role, especially 9/11 and the Haitian earthquake of 2010. The author also examines suicide through the works of writers as diverse as Tolstoy, Faulkner, Albert Camus, Dylan Thomas, Zora Neale Hurston, Christopher Hitchens, and Toni Morrison. For executions, she shares the wisdom of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a death row inmate. Regarding death as an all-encompassing end to life, she smartly draws from Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Most movingly, Danticat brings her audience into the very private realm of her own mother's death from cancer. She writes of the tests, the diagnosis, the decline, and the final hours and moments as her mother slipped away. Though faith and fear both come up in this book, they are not highlighted. This work is more about how death is described in literature, and the author asks if we really can describe it adequately at all. Danticat takes on an unpleasant topic with sensitivity and passion.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 1, 2017

"I have been writing about death for as long as I have been writing," says Danticat. Here she uses her mother's dying from cancer as a way to investigate how she and other writers (e.g., Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison) talk about death in their own work. With a national tour.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2017

Danticat (Claire of the Sea Light) explores the various faces of death, filtered through her writing, life, and literature. Most valuable is the chronicle of her mother's final days after declining further chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. Unflinching reflections on those wanting to die, the death-row condemned, and survivors of close calls resonate with the spiritual desolation afflicting individuals and countries after large-scale catastrophes such as 9/11, and the author's lacerating experience losing relatives in the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The root of all sorrows, arguably the source of religion, atheism, politics, and war, might be our chronic awareness that life comes with an expiration date. Danticat quotes Toni Morrison's Sula (1973), particularly the suicidal character Shadrack's conceit that life might be accidental "but death was deliberate." Gabriel Garcia Marquez's iconic One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), perhaps more than any novel, mines death's absurdity, blessing, wonder, and horror born from experience. In an increasingly secular world, the author infers, the measure of our lives might be found in love and language. VERDICT From "The Art of" series, this emotional, brave work interrogates and bears witness to the ultimate unknown. Will appeal to readers looking for warmth and insight--whatever their personal circumstance. [See Prepub Alert, 2/6/17.]--William Grabowski, McMechen, WV

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2017

Danticat (Claire of the Sea Light) explores the various faces of death, filtered through her writing, life, and literature. Most valuable is the chronicle of her mother's final days after declining further chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. Unflinching reflections on those wanting to die, the death-row condemned, and survivors of close calls resonate with the spiritual desolation afflicting individuals and countries after large-scale catastrophes such as 9/11, and the author's lacerating experience losing relatives in the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The root of all sorrows, arguably the source of religion, atheism, politics, and war, might be our chronic awareness that life comes with an expiration date. Danticat quotes Toni Morrison's Sula (1973), particularly the suicidal character Shadrack's conceit that life might be accidental "but death was deliberate." Gabriel Garcia Marquez's iconic One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), perhaps more than any novel, mines death's absurdity, blessing, wonder, and horror born from experience. In an increasingly secular world, the author infers, the measure of our lives might be found in love and language. VERDICT From "The Art of" series, this emotional, brave work interrogates and bears witness to the ultimate unknown. Will appeal to readers looking for warmth and insight--whatever their personal circumstance. [See Prepub Alert, 2/6/17.]--William Grabowski, McMechen, WV

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.