A Widow's Story: A Memoir

Oates' writing style, so readable that she makes the slightest most ordinary event of profound interest. Not just a tale of the experience of grief. It is more revealing about JCO and what she is like as a person. After reading "them," I couldn't help feeling like "Who could write like this?" and "What is this person like in real life?" I guess I thought she must be this confident woman who is such a great writer, I wasn't expecting her to have such low self-esteem, such self-loathing. She even seems to blame herself for his death, which I guess is part of the mourning process. As with her dark characters, she allows herself to be fully seen here, warts and all,but you can also feel what a traumatic experience it is to lose a spouse, show more something you're never ready for. show less

A Widow’s Story is the memoir of the devastation Oates experienced when her husband unexpectedly died. The account is dissonant, a tale of wounds rubbed raw recounted in a distanced, refined style.
Oates has entitled her book “A” widow’s story, but often in the course of it, she describes herself in the third person, in italicized letters. Some of these passages read like a third-person commentary (“In this way, unwittingly, and against the grain of her temperament, the widow has made a good decision,” p. 366). Others are formulated as bits of advice, almost like excerpts from a book of etiquette (“Any act a widow performs, or contemplates performing, is an alternative to suicide and is in this desirable however naive, show more foolish, or futile,” p. 97).
I doubt many would prefer a life that never knows companionship, or a series of short, troubled relationships, to a long, happy marriage. There is a price to be paid, however. As Oates describes it, “widowhood is the punishment for having been a wife” (p. 102).
The writing isn’t flawless. At times, Oates uses two adjectives when either (acrid, bitter) would have made the point. And I continue to wonder: are jellyfish both translucent and transparent? A minor quibble, I admit. I admired the way she interspersed batches of her e-mails into the account; they seem like a seismographic chart of her emotional upheaval. It’s a well-structured book, for instance in the recurring motif of the manuscript of Ray’s unfinished novel, abandoned decades earlier.
This is not the kind of book I can say I “liked.” The pain, for all of the polite polish of Oates’s style, is too believably conveyed. I doubt I will soon forget the experience of reading of her struggles with the “basilisk.” That's the name Oates gives to that part of her interior dialogue that she describes as a beady-eyed lizard at the periphery of her vision, ever-reminding her that she is wrong to outlive her husband and that it is futile to continue to live. Does this sound crazy? Oates won’t argue: “Traveling in the wake of my husband’s death has been the outward face of my madness as my madness has been the inward face of my grief” (p. 238). show less

I tend to not enjoy reading memoirs, which Joyce Carol Oates describes in this poignant book as at once the most seductive and dangerous of genres. At their worst, they come across as whiny (look at poor me and the vicissitudes I've overcome...) and at best, self-congratulatory. But then every so often one comes along, like Ann Patchett's memoir of a friendship in "Truth and Beauty", and this book by Oates about surviving the death of her husband.

At some point, most of us will survive the loss of a loved one -- a parent, a child, a spouse. It's almost banal. And yet out of this experience, Oates has crafted a book that is unsparing of herself and yet a tribute to the value of loving and being loved. The death of her husband, Ray Smith, show more literally unmoors her, and she drifts far away from her former life, uncertain of whether she wants to return to it or if she ever can. Thoughts of suicide tempt her -- a basilisk figure lurking in the edge of her vision eggs her on, repeatedly, reminding her that she is a valueless person on her own -- even as she battles through the practicalities (disposing of the endless Harry & David "sympathy baskets", coping with distraught cats, reading a stream of sympathy letters.

What struck me as most authentic and valid in this memoir is something that we should all try to remember (including the reviewer who described the author as arrogant and self-pitying): we cannot ever see inside of another's soul to fully understand the torment they are going through. If we are honest, we don't want to. What Oates has done in this memoir is to force us to confront the magnitude of the pain that the death of a spouse of 47 years brings in its wake; a pain that can be amplified rather than muted by the well-meaning gestures and platitudes of others. For whom do we exist? That's a question that Oates tackles indirectly and her verdict is mixed. Despite pondering suicide (periodically, throughout this memoir, she pauses to contemplate just how many pills she has available, and rejoices when she can obtain more) Oates opts for survival, of some kind. But it's as much despite the care and attention of her friends (appreciated, yet never a panacea as no panacea exists) as because of it.

This book is more an act of catharsis than it is one that is intended to be helpful to others in similar situations. But it's also the most honest I've ever read about the way death of a loved one pushes one into oneself, into a state of mind and being that others too often dismiss as "selfish" or self-absorbed.

I didn't find this book depressing, for it is as at least as much about the tremendous power and endurance of love as it as about the sorrows and traumas associated with its loss. As we age, we realize how inextricably the two are linked, and Oates is to be praised for not letting us get away with thinking that we will find the process inspirational or ultimately of value. It's not an easy book to read, but it's powerful, and it goes on to my list of the best books of the year that I've read so far. I wouldn't recommend that anyone who has recently lost a loved one read it -- it may rub salt in the wound, may irritate or anger someone who feels and reacts to that loss in a different manner -- but anyone over the age of 40 should read it, as well as anyone who wants to be reassured that a memoir isn't just a "look how great I am" book in disguise. I've rated it 5 stars.

Full disclosure: I obtained a copy of the book from the publishers via NetGalley.com show less

A WIDOW'S STORY, Joyce Carol Oates's memoir of the year following the sudden unexpected death of her husband of 48 years was a simply wrenching read. She holds nothing back in her interior monologues showing her inconsolable grief, loneliness and suicidal thoughts. That part of her narrative is indeed very hard to read, as it makes one wonder if most, if not all widows, go through such agony.

But Oates is a writer, and this book is obviously one of the ways she worked her way through what has been one of the most awful times of her life. I was reminded of another such book I read a few years back, Anne Roiphe's EPILOGUE. And Oates herself mentions the bestselling memoir written by Joan Didion, following the loss of that writer's husband. show more

Perhaps it is not surprising that the parts I found most interesting in Oates's story are the memories she shares of her long marriage, particularly those from the early days of their marriage, when the world was filled with so many possibilities. Since then Oates has become nationally famous as an author, of course, with over 60 books published. She is even aware that her obsessively prodigious writing output has made her something of a joke in some writing circles, albeit, I think, a very gentle sort of joke, since writers in general are simply in awe of the sheer volume of her work.

The truth is, although I've been very aware of Oates's work for forty years, I've only really read one of her books - a short one called BLONDE. I've started reading a few others, but never managed to finish any of them, beginning with THEM, back in the 70s. Her fiction is generally simply too 'dense' for my taste.

The memoir is a well-blended pastiche of journal entries, emails and frankly-voiced fears that must face all long-married people who are suddenly alone, for whatever reason. I was moved deeply by the distress evidenced so eloquently by Oates.

I will admit that I was initially a bit intimidated by the sheer length of the book (over 400 pages), but found it to be a surprisingly quick read, owing I have to assume to Oates's skill as a writer. (Even so, it probably could have been pared down a bit; could have benefited from an astute and sympathetic editor.) It's not an easy book to read. It's a hard subject. But it is a beautifully written account of the long and painful trajectory of grief. show less

Joyce Carol Oates’s memoir A Widow’s Story is a harrowing, powerful read. I had trouble putting it down, even though it was thoroughly wrenching. I started reading it on my iPhone (my copy courtesy of the publisher) and only after I’d been reading awhile did I figure out that it’s over 400 pages long; it turned out to be a very quick 400 pages, but still, I wondered how she would keep it up for that long. How could she write with such detail, such honesty, such emotion, how could she keep up that level of intensity and make the book readable at that length?

The book tells the story of the death of Oates’s husband, Raymond Smith, in February, 2008. It was a fairly quick final illness and death; he was fine one day, and the next show more in the hospital suffering from pneumonia. He died a few days later from an infection. Oates tells the story of the days in the hospital and then the days, weeks, and months afterward as she tries to survive and make sense of what happened. She is thoroughly distraught, full of anger and guilt, and she collects sleeping pills in case she decides to commit suicide. The thought of suicide is a comfort, an escape available if she needs it. She has friends who take care of her and help her through all the tasks a widow faces (the funeral, the will, etc.), but she feels only a shell of the person she once was. Her world is an entirely new, unrecognizable, horrible place.

She writes about all this in great detail, describing her thoughts and emotions each step of the way. It should get dull, but it doesn’t: there’s something riveting about her voice that kept me almost spellbound. There is a lot of repetition, which also should get dull, but doesn’t; she faces the same problems again and again — not wanting to be out with people but when she’s home alone not wanting to be there either, getting angry when people say insensitive things, feeling guilty for surviving her husband, thinking about and counting her sleeping pills — and each time it’s a fresh emotional hit, and I felt like I was right there with her.

Read the rest of the review at Of Books and Bicycles show less

A stunning tell-all from a very private person. In this brutally honest memoir of grief, Joyce Carol Oates the author gives us the reactions and emotions of the months of anguish endured by Joyce Smith the wife of Raymond Smith, a renowned editor when he unexpectedly died of complications of pneumonia after a short stay in Princeton hospital in February 2008.

Stunned into almost complete catatonia, she is unable to function as Joyce Smith. She cannot believe Ray has left her. She neglects her person, her house, her mail, her expected duties, and often almost forgets the cats. She becomes particularly distraught at the continual appearance of the "Harry and David condolence baskets" which she does not want, and has no idea how to dispose show more of. Nights, which are the hardest for her to endure, bring thoughts of suicide, but her mind is too numbed even to bring her to action to complete the act. She gathers all the medications previously dispensed to her husband and herself, counting up and listing different anti-depressants, sleeping pills, muscle relaxers, antihistamines, and other pain killers, trying to decide if she has enough to accomplish the task of putting herself out of her misery.

Daytimes bring a trance like state that can still find fault and hurt in every well-meaninged remark by friends and strangers alike. She is unable to accept that people want to help. By day Joyce Carol Oates continues teaching at Princeton, refusing to believe that Ray is gone. By night, returning to an empty house, Joyce Smith cannot function, unable to open condolence notes, email, or answer the phone. Friends gently guide her through the funeral process. Gradually, she allows herself to consider continuing with life. By April, when Ray's garden begins to sprout with the bulbs he had planted the previous fall, she experiences the stirring of life, and to the accompaniment of her memories, begins to mend.

The writing in this work is exquisite. The reader feels the pain, the desolation and the total emptiness Oates experienced during this traumatic period. By speaking in the first person, she allows us to enter her isolation so we can experience the enervating emptiness she feels. She is constantly working at simply getting through each day, each chore, each next step. She intersperses her recollections with copies of notes, emails, and letters from and to friends and acquaintances. Periodically she will shift to a recap in the third person, almost as if she wants to look over the widow's shoulder to produce a how-to (or how not to?) guide for widows. At one point, (pgs 40-41) she gives us a sentence almost two pages long....very similar to a Saramago train of thought. It was enormously effective to show us the complete disintegration of her thought processes as she tries and fails to come to terms with her husband's death.

As she works her way through the grieving process she is able to look outside herself :

"For the widow is a posthumous person passing among the living. When the widow smiles, when the widow laughs, you see the glisten in the widow's eyes, utter madness, an actress desperate to play her role as others would wish her to play her role and only another widow, another woman who has recently lost her husband, can perceive the fraud." (pg. 332).

I've been reading a lot of memoirs in the past two years. This is not an uplifting book in the style of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, or Kate Braestrup's Here if You Need Me, but it is an affirming book, one that assures us that life can go on :

"Of the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death the widow should think I kept myself alive." (pg. 416.)

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Reading Joyce Carol Oates’ memoir about grief and recent widowhood is an intense experience. One almost has to do so with one eye partially closed as she has spared us nothing of the pain, confusion, anger and loneliness of her condition. An intensity perhaps heightened by the fact that she had been with her husband for almost 50 years with few days apart.

One of the interesting aspects of the memoir highlights that despite living with someone for so long, there are still massive aspects of each other people may keep to themselves, and Oates worries about what it is she might not know about her husband, what she might discover (especially as she considers reading an unpublished novel whose manuscript she has known about but not seen show more for almost the length of their marriage).

Expanding on this (and something that cropped up in the volume of published Journals) was the separation – this public entity ‘Joyce Carol Oates’, and the woman Joyce Smith (who now has a further identity with her recent re-marriage). How much did her husband know about the life of JCO when he didn’t read her fiction (only reading criticism and essay)? How much of Joyce Smith is JCO, one assumes quite a large part with so prolific a writer (it is almost impossible to get away from that phrase, and I use it with awe rather than a groan!).

Although physically one might perceive Oates as quite a vulnerable person, when you read her work you can sense a core of iron in there, so watching this person disintegrate is very painful. But I feel there is a point in listening to the voices of those who have ‘been there’. We live now, in the democratic west, in a society that has lost its relationship with death. If it is perceived at all at a time when it is not the personal experience of an individual it is as a form of entertainment in films and computer games. And of course those who have died get up and play the game again.

As most of us now also live in isolation to wider family and often not within a functioning community we don’t see the natural cycles of birth, life and death in the way that was common before.

I think that reading such a memoir as this might enable us to ‘live better’ as well as to ‘make a good death’ when the time comes. To grow in the knowledge and learn to live with the only contract that none of us can buck in life, the fact that it concludes with death.

Of course, no doubt, the Philosophers have given some thought to this issue of how greater knowledge and understanding of death may improve the life led, and I want to explore that, but in the meantime the reading of JCO’s experiences have enhanced my own life and I thank her for her gift, and am delighted to know that subsequently she has found a new happiness, which proves that although you will never ‘get over’ the loss of someone deeply loved, the opportunity of finding another love or life again is out there. show less