Death and Other Holidays

This book arrived unbidden at my doorstep on a day I heard news I did not want to hear about my beloved partner Jon Lathrop. As I am a writer and sometime book reviewer, author interviewer, essayist, books sometimes show up as enticements for my attention. I'm not a hugely high profile book writer, but still, some do come.But why this book? Why that day? I was expecting Revolution Sunday by Wendy Guerra (trans. Achy Obejas), a book I'd expressed specific interest in, and it did come a few weeks later. My plans had been to interview her for Full Stop. As that book isn't due out until later in the year, thankfully, I have some time. I'm on holiday, you see. One that death has caused.I can tell you that I read Marci Vogel's book. I can tell you that it did for me what the nonfiction works on suicide and surviving the loss of a loved one couldn't. I will read Joyce Carol Oates' A Widow's Tale. I have read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. I want to tell you what Vogel's novella managed that the non-literary works didn't, but I'm on holiday. Maybe I'll get there before its pub date. I don't know. I've got my own novel to return to, and I've no idea how or when to do that. Death doesn't end, but holidays do.That's all I got for now.