Maggie Smith (5) (1977–)

This is a poignant memoir of the dissolution of the author's marriage. She brings all of her poetic skills to demonstrating the cycles of grief, pain, mourning, and healing that comes with loss. Her meditations reveal the personal aspects of her experiences without divulging the private aspects. In doing so, some of the personal becomes universal. The gender inequality of the invisible labor in the home, including the emotional work of parenting children is one of the universal aspects.

I found the writing engaging and powerful and appreciated the author's ability to work around the issue of loss and create something whole in the end.… (more)

A very personal, poignant and moving memoir about her divorce, written in short, sometimes even one line, chapters. Some reviews on other sites had a hard time with her authorial intrusions, e.g. "Reader, I'm not going to tell you everything." I found this narrative device, as well as the occasional chapters in third person narration of a play, intrusive and slightly irritating, but (and I may not be correct about this) I attributed these shifts as Smith's own psychological need to briefly distance herself from all the honest pain she was recounting. And so I'll subtract just half a star, as I struggled with the distancing these devices created in me.… (more)