Excerpt
“A searing elegy…this memoir reads like butter and cuts like a knife.”
People (4 star review)"A tender, absorbing, and deeply moving memoir...[Bialosky] writes so gracefully and bravely that what you're left with in the end is an overwhelming sense of love."
Entertainment Weekly“Extraordinarily useful...a source of solace and understanding…. [Bialosky’s] hand is always skillful, as attentive to the rhythms of storytelling as to conveying emotion.”
Time"An extraordinarily valiant and resonant testimony to the healing powers of truth and empathy.”
Booklist “A beautifully composed, deeply reflective work.”
Publishers Weekly“In quietly piercing language, [Bialosky] delivers a sure sense of a 'beautiful girl' who took her own life at age 21 and of what it means to grieve such a death, burdened with an awful sense of responsibility that can’t easily be shared with others.”
Library Journal“This is the kind of book that can teach usall of usabout what it means to be a thinking, feeling human being. A book, in other words, that will teach you how to live.”
Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life“The plain language of Bialosky’s title reflects this book’s quiet, intimate and profoundly understated art: a clear medium penetrating into the wounded and wounding mystery of her subject.”
Robert Pinsky, former United States Poet Laureate“That rare book that is so articulate and stunningly close to the bone that one holds one’s breath while reading it. . . . Written with a poet’s eye and a novelist’s gift, History of a Suicide is remarkable for its author’s bravery, candor and ability to tolerate the intolerable.”
A.M. Homes, author of This Book Will Save Your Life“Jill Bialosky has written an extraordinary book, which brings her sister Kim to life and also serves as a practical road map to understanding why life can become unbearable for someone who seems extravagantly gifted. Readers will find solace and clarity in this wonderful book.”
Susan Cheever, author of Home Before Dark