Jeff Porter

After the sudden death of his wife from a brain hemorrhage, the author chronicles his grief experience and remembers some of the most memorable moments of his life with his partner. The author adopts a stream of consciousness style of writing which flits from one moment to another as if viewing individual pictures in a photo album.

Throughout the memoir, there is an extended metaphor of space travel. At the moment of his wife's death, part of him was launched into space and has been show more traveling farther away ever since. Now and again he checks in with his space self and hears of distant sights in the galaxy. I thought this metaphor poignant and beautifully used. The author does a great job of communicating his experience as he journeys through his new life. show less

Porter’s wife died suddenly and he seems to think if he can just recall every detail about her he can somehow recover her. The hauntingly titled Planet Claire : Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers is a mix of memories, mourning and maybe a touch of madness. Chapters are named for various planets, moons or the sun although the reason for that was not clear to me.

Most of the text is addressed directly to Claire. It often feels like eavesdropping on private conversations as he says, show more “Remember when we went to Seattle? ... to Ireland? ... when we did such-and-such?” The memories are in no particular order and Porter often mentions what Claire was wearing or other minor details that don’t really give us a clear picture of her. Through much of the book he seems to be free associating so the topic can change without warning from paragraph to paragraph. At one point he goes on at some length detailing the changing score of a dice game they once played. For the reader this almost feels like an inside joke, meaningful only to the two of them. Descriptions of their garden through the seasons or places they had visited are well drawn but Space Boy (the piece of himself that he feels was ejected into space when Claire died) is rather annoying with his pointless reports from somewhere in the galaxy.

Grief is perhaps never fully processed but I did not feel that Porter was making much progress in his journey. In the last chapter he abruptly announces he has met someone but only says she is a lovely person, an artist. In the very last paragraph of the book he says he has remarried (the artist? someone else? he doesn’t say) so maybe he did at least manage to reassemble himself. show less

This is an ode to a love and marriage, then sadly, an early death of the authors much beloved wife.

Received as an early reviewers copy, I highly recommend this book. The writing is clever and filled with years of memories.

While the author grieves the sudden death of his wife to a brain aneurysm, he remembers all the wonderful times of joy as they go hand in hand with the overriding sadness of death.

Excellently written, this is a story of a man who candidly writes of a year of tremendous loss show more and sadness that led the way to walking on in life. show less

My apologies to Ann Hood, who wrote that this would grab everyone who reads it. It did not. At least not this reader. It felt like I was trudging through a huge mud puddle trying to get to the other side. I mean no disrespect. The death of a spouse is devastating, to say the least. The authors deep thoughts were too much for me. It was probably cathartic writing down all those memories and am happy for him if it helped to process his grief. To be fair, I am not a huge fan of memoirs so this show more is on me.
I won this from LibraryThing giveaway for an honest review - thank you! 2.5 stars show less