A Widow's Story

A Memoir

De: Joyce Carol Oates

Narrado por: Ellen Parker

Unlike anything Joyce Carol Oates has written before, A Widow’s Story is the universally acclaimed author’s poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of Raymond Smith, her husband of forty-six years, and its wrenching, surprising aftermath. A recent recipient of National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, Oates, whose novels (Blonde, The Gravedigger’s Daughter, Little Bird of Heaven, etc.) rank among the very finest in contemporary American fiction, offers an achingly personal story of love and loss. A Widow’s Story is a literary memoir on a par with The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and Calvin Trillin’s About Alice.

Not worth a credit

Being a recent widow I wanted to see if there were pearls of wisdom. What I got was a who's who of her friends and her jet set lifestyle. It felt very pretentious and tended to be just her whining about insomnia. Really disappointing

Wonderful Narration

Where does A Widow's Story rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Possibly the best for narration -- at least in the top 3. Overall, the book itself, however, was a great disappointment. I don't think I'd have finished it had the narration not been so so good.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Disappointment

Which scene was your favorite?

If you're looking for inspiration look elsewhere

But if you want to follow a realistic journey into and almost through a heartbreaking tragedy then read on., for it is a reassuring story in one sense only, that survival is possible.

Realistic!

I lost my own husband almost 9 months ago and I found this book to be the most reflective of my own experience that I ever read. The pain was intense, the confusion and inability to function were true and the insights were spot on. Since my husband and I had lived in Montana for the first three years of our marriage ever so far away from our home in Massachusetts, I greatly appreciated her observation of the intense bond that happens between two people when they live so far away from home and what an impact that makes on the rest of their lives.

Mixed feelings . . .

While I enjoyed the storytelling (Ellen Parker did a magnificent job narrating) I was a bit unsettled listening to this story. The similarity of Oates story to Didion's memoir about the loss of her husband of 40 years seems more than coincidental to me. Oates is so critical of everyone around her that I had trouble caring about her terrible loss. Ms. Oates 'name drops' so often it's almost painful.

Oates is an incredible story teller, her use of language is like poetry. Listen to this book for her classic storytelling style more than the content. The content left me cold.

Did the second half have an editor?

I give Part One five stars - it was as emotional, as riveting as some of Oates' best fiction. And my heart ached for her because of what she was experiencing.

Yet Part Two deserves only three stars. Besides being full of redundancies, Oates' stream-of-consciousness writing - along with her attempts to share every positive aspect of her husband's life, along with her every suicidal fantasy - gave the last half a whining quality. Though I was glad to see she'd found a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel at story's end, I was also relieved to have reached the end of book.

Narrator was superb! Five stars for Ellen Parker!

Very in depth experience of grief

Where does A Widow's Story rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It's in the top 10 of all time.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Joyce Carol Oates- the author

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me very sad but hopeful.

Well written

Oates is a fine writer and her talent is on full display here. The wordcraft is impeccable but the extraordinarily close attention to vocabulary and style flattens any emotional impact. Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking helped me a great deal more after my husband died, because it revealed so much more about the almost indescribable pain of loss, and of widowhood. Oates is precise and comprehensive and I’m sure she loved her husband very much, but it’s almost as if she is observing her loss from a great distance, causing readers to feel disengaged. She name-drops frequently, and I too was disturbed by how she described the hospital worker who cared for her husband. It seemed gratuitously cruel and classist. I don't wish to denigrate any widow's memoir, it's an excruciating experience...but if you read just one book on this topic, I'd order the Didion. Magical Thinking was searing and from the heart. This book is sterile and analytic, though technically and grammatically fine. It's oddly difficult to believe in Oates's grief. She seems to be writing instead about disruption–a very different thing. A final takeaway has to be the truly extraordinary support network Oates enjoyed, which she documents in detail.

Depression that dragged.

I understand this was about a very sad, life changing experience, but with nearly half the book completed, I still found it depressing and dragging. I was so down after listening each morning on my way to work that I finally had to stop mid book, and move to another more upbeat topic. I hope in the end, she finds ways to be happy again but I won't finish the book to find out.

Shocking and brutally true

I was so disturbed by this haunting story of a woman suddenly left alone that I could not put it down and then could not sleep at the horror of the prospect of losing someone that you love.
Beautifully written, a book that is life changing.