Synopses & Reviews
"Nancy Mairs writes knowingly, even lovingly, about a subject most of us seek to avoid: death and its essential place in life. Her gripping meditations . . . both comfort and provoke with their spiritual strength and hard-won wisdom."
—O Magazine
"The ten essays in Nancy Mairs's A Troubled Guest . . . radiate the truest kinds of insight about life, illness, death, and above all, love."
— Elle Magazine
"Through these evocative and often affecting essays, Mairs charts a territory that defines the corporeal and the spiritual, delineating as much about how we live as how we die."
—Publishers Weekly
"In clear, unaffected prose that quickly establishes-along with her candor-an intimacy with the reader, Mairs begins by explaining her feelings toward her own impending death. . . . Not self-help by any stretch, but it will be of interest to anyone recently touched by death."
—Kirkus Reviews
On Ordinary Time:
"A conversion from good-girl spirituality to something much deeper and darker. . . . A remarkable accomplishment. . . . A relentlessly physical writer, as fiercely committed to her art as to her spiritual development."
—Kathleen Norris, The New York Times Book Review
On Carnal Acts:
"Eloquent and remarkable. . . . I closed Carnal Acts feeling a hundred times more prepared for whatever perils and joys lie ahead of me."
—Barbara Kingsolver
Table of Contents
A necessary end -- Death with father -- I enter orphanhood -- Aftermath -- Regrets and revisions -- Lost children -- The death of the other -- Reflections on an anniversary -- Nicey Nancy and the bad buffaloes -- Ron her son, coda.