What We Lose

Actual rating: 4.5 Stars

“I've amazed myself with how well I've learned to live around her absence. This void is my constant companion, no matter what I do. Nothing will fill it, and it will never go away.”
Zinzi Clemmons, What We Lose

Clemmons's debut novel is compelling, poignant and reflective. It is filled with short, nonlinear vignettes of Thandi's life -- particularly after the loss of her mother to cancer. Thandi's father is African American and her mother is mixed race South African. As a light skinned young black woman, Thandi struggles with identity, belonging and the past. Through Clemmons's descriptive writing, I was able to grasp Thandi's grief, despair, and vulnerability. Even though race comes up in the book, What We show more Lose is about a lot more than race. It is about loss, grief, traditions, and how death plays a role in life. Clemmons is a graceful, and poetic writer. I look forward to additional work by this talented writer.

A huge thanks to Edelweiss and Viking for providing me with an arc of the book in exchange for an honest review. It was a pleasure!

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This is primarily a novel of grief, although it does a wonderful job of exploring race relations, particularly between women of color. Taking place across two continents, the book reads like an autobiography or a diary instead of a work of fiction. It's not told in a traditional style, which I found both intriguing and sometimes off-putting. It draws in real events, photos, charts, and more to illustrate points, and has been described as being told in a "stream of consciousness" style of writing. I read an article about the author and many of the events her fictional character Thandi experiences are based on her own life, such as the illness and loss of her mother while she was a college student. It's a compelling read and the author show more has a very unique voice. show less

"This was the paradox: How would I ever heal from losing the person who healed me? The question was so enormous that I could see only my entire life, everything I know, filling it."

"I thought about how every place on Earth contains its tragedies, love stories, people surviving and others falling, and for this reason, from far enough of a distance and under enough darkness, they were all essentially the same."

I rather loved this short novel of grief and mourning. Part meditation, part coming of age story, and wholly a tale of a young biracial woman, born in South Africa and raised in the U.S., searching for her place in the world. Clemmons' writing is deceptively straightforward, creating moments of deep feeling without relying on show more flowery turns of phrase or even poetic rhythms or imagery. Thandi is a compellingly honest narrator of her experience. Neither bitter nor bathetic, she captures the universal experience of mourning while exploring the particularity of Thandi's complicated intersecting identities. And did I mention that it's a short novel? Definitely recommended. show less

As a college composition professor, I'd look at a collection of pages like this and say, where are the connections? That's why I hate teaching college composition. I feel like Clemmons is creating a new, exciting un-structure for narrative which allows her novel to be about thousands of things while still concentrating on the powerful point of view of our protagonist. I loved this book.

semi-autobiographical fiction - grief novel ; follows Thandi through a series of romantic relationships (including an unplanned pregnancy) and dealing with the loss of her South-African mother to cancer. (The author was also raised in Philadelphia with a South African mother who died from cancer, so one expects some of her thoughts and emotions tied to these experiences are her own, but otherwise the reader must assume artistic liberties have been taken with the characters and their lives.) Takes place in the US with visits to family in South Africa.

the nonlinear narrative didn't really grip me at first, but you get more attached to Thandi over time, and different perspectives from diverse voices are valuable and appreciated.

I almost mistook this novel for a memoir and don't take that for a bad thing. It's rare that a novel feels so honest, realistic, and compelling. The death of the narrator's mother from breast cancer frames this novel and the author digs into the grieving process in a way which indicates that she must know these emotions well. This book is so simple yet so compelling and I don't know exactly what to say about it other than to say: read this book.

2.5 Eloquent. Since it was audio, I assumed it was memoir - it had the same self-centered focus and is mostly about the narrator and her young adult life. Definitely auto-biographical strands based on Clemmons' background. It's kind of a coming-of-age story, delayed in millennial fashion and the narrator, Thandi is in the center of the circle of life, mourning her mother's death from cancer, and discovering her unplanned pregnancy with across-the-continent "boyfriend" Peter. Issues of race and economic disparity are touched on here, but mostly it is a tale of relationships - the best and worst of the people we love the most - and how to give that context. I think I would've like it more had I read and not listened.