Sanctuary

November 16, 2020
Rapp Black (The Still Point of the Turning World) shines in this stirring account of life after the death of her son Ronan from Tay-Sachs, a rare and always fatal inherited disorder. In July 2012, with two-year-old Ronan’s health in decline, Rapp Black considered suicide, but decided not to go through with her plan upon realizing, “I want to love again, to know hope and happiness.” Instead, she carried on and fell in love, remarrying after Ronan’s 2013 death and later having a daughter. This experience—being both a new mother and a grieving mother—serves as a springboard for an exploration of the concept of resilience. In one passage, she delves into the meaning of the word (the term made its written debut in 1818, discussing effective methods of shipbuilding), then segues into the meaning in more contemporary use related to courage and personal strength. Rapp Black asserts that, in life, resilience requires no extraordinary measures because life itself—with its inevitable losses—demands resilience for survival. The prose is lyrical and hypnotic but never overwrought or contrived. This is a mesmerizing and unforgettable tale.

November 15, 2020
A meticulous examination of the aftershocks of the loss of a child. Rapp Black begins with a stirring scene: Devastated by her son's terminal illness and failing marriage, she recounts how she stood on a bridge in New Mexico, contemplating throwing herself nearly 600 feet into the river below. Though she walked away, she was far from mental or emotional recovery. In her previous memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World, the author tracked her experience during the period after she realized that her son, Ronan, had Tay-Sachs disease, a debilitating genetic disorder that progressively destroys the nervous system. In this follow-up, she describes in wrenching detail his death in 2013, shortly before his third birthday, and her response to that tragedy as well as the painful, "cruel" dissolution of her marriage. Rapp Black soon remarried and had a daughter, Charlie, a year after Ronan's death. The aching conflict she continues to feel about being mother to both a dead child and a living one is central to the story, as is her attempt to refute the many ways her friends and others tried to praise and reassure her for her "resilience" (a word she has "a complicated relationship with") and on her "second chance" or the "resurrection of your life," ideas that frustrate her. "Ronan is gone and Charlie is here," she tells herself, as she tries to adjust to being "not just a bereaved parent, but a bereaved parent with a living child." Not so much a traditional memoir as a series of essays of varying lengths, the book doesn't follow a straightforward narrative arc, as Rapp Black attempts to understand her feelings and irresolvable conflict from multiple angles. She employs a variety of metaphors--dark matter in one chapter, butterflies in another--which may leave some readers impatient even as they clearly delineate her abiding mental state. A searing, uncompromising effort to wrestle with permanent grief.

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December 1, 2020
Within a two-year span, Black (The Still Point of the Turning World, 2014) loses her two-year old son to Tay-Sachs disease, divorces, falls in love, remarries, and gives birth to a healthy baby girl. In this probing memoir, she shares her journey as a mother split in two by the painful past and the joyful present. How does one survive great suffering and go on with the knowledge that everything falls away, that nothing is sure, that there are no do-overs? Rejecting the characterizations of those who tell her she's resilient or who compare her to a mythic phoenix, rising from the ashes, she struggles to a more human-sized answer--people do what they must do--and a more nuanced definition of resilience. It's not simply the current "it" word for strong or tough. A resilient person is one who has flexibility, one who adapts. Comfort comes from her wisdom in perceiving that all the people who came before us--now unseen but with us still--hold us up, supporting us in all that we do.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2021

Memoirist Rapp's previous work, The Still Point of the Turning World, introduced readers to the author's terminally ill son, Ronan, and to her process of turning the loss of his life into a reflection of what it means to love and live in the moment. In her newest work, the author reflects further on her grief from her darkest moments, to survivor's guilt, and eventually to an acceptance that although wounds may not heal, they become a part of us and we are able to continue living. Ultimately, this open and frank reflection centers on what it means to be resilient, finding inspiration from the natural world, historical moments, literary quips, and somatic psychology. Rapp also considers the importance of friendship, and how hers have helped through life's most difficult times. This memoir, which offers a more matured style than the author's previous works, is also one of recollection, as Rapp reflects upon her son's life and death, reliving the defining moments. VERDICT A must for fans of Rapp's previous memoirs and for any reader trying to better understand grief and trauma. This poignant account will be of particular interest for those who have grieved the loss of a child.--Kelly Karst, California Inst. of Integral Studies

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