Fi

A Memoir

De: Alexandra Fuller

Narrado por: Alexandra Fuller

From the award-winning New York Times bestselling author, Alexandra Fuller, comes a career defining memoir about grieving the sudden loss of her twenty-one-year-old child

“Fair to say, I was in a ribald state the summer before my fiftieth birthday.” And so begins Alexandra Fuller’s open, vivid new memoir, Fi. It’s midsummer in Wyoming and Alexandra is barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe, reeling from a midlife breakup, freshly sober and piecing her way uncertainly through a volatile new relationship with a younger woman, Alexandra vows to get herself back on even keel.

And then—suddenly and incomprehensibly—her son Fi, at twenty-one years old, dies in his sleep.

No stranger to loss—young siblings, a parent, a home country—Alexandra is nonetheless leveled. At the same time, she is painfully aware that she cannot succumb and abandon her two surviving daughters as her mother before her had done. From a sheep wagon deep in the mountains of Wyoming to a grief sanctuary in New Mexico to a silent meditation retreat in Alberta, Canada, Alexandra journeys up and down the spine of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to find how to grieve herself whole. There is no answer, and there are countless answers—in poetry, in rituals and routines, in nature and in the indigenous wisdom she absorbed as a child in Zimbabwe. By turns disarming, devastating and—unexpectedly, blessedly funny, Alexandra recounts the wild medicine of painstakingly grieving a child in a culture that has no instructions for it.

©2024 Alexandra Fuller (P)2024 Recorded Books

Dissection of grief

A poetic and graphic journey of one woman’s experience of grief. I appreciate anyone who can put into words what that dark place is like in an illuminating way.

Heartbreaking and beautiful.

I’ve read all of Fuller’s books and love and enjoy them each differently. I think this is the most realistic book on grief I’ve read and I’ve read countless after losing my husband way too soon. Fuller portrayed the desperation so well and then the slow healing steps following. An incredible read.

Phenomenal Fi

Beautifully and Poignantly written. Alexandra Fuller is my favourite author. Having grown up in South Africa, gone to a similar boarding school at age 11, and experiencing a tragic loss in my own family, this book touches me in a profound way. I understand the yearning she feels for her birth country, for her tribe, and the exquisite pain she felt at the loss of an ancestor

Profound and important

This book was hard to listen to because of the strength of the emotion and the arduousness of the journey. But it’s a brave and important work. I feared it, but am glad I read it. Truly a beautiful and profound work.

Lyrical, poetic and poignant- I would rewind so as not to miss a single word.

Lyrical, poetic and poignant- I would rewind so as not to miss a single word. I wished it wouldn't end.

Honest

Authors honest. The only thing that is not a bad idea sharing of her deepest depths

Sweet, deep, perfect

I have been half in love with Alexandra Fuller since the first book of hers I read. This one is different, of course, because of its subject matter. She again opens up completely and frankly, again entertains and instructs, but this time goes far deeper, on a delicate episode of her life that resonates of course to many readers, whether we may have gone through something similar, or we simply aspire to some small portion of her intelligence and sensibility. Thank you, Bo.

Lifting the fog

Early on in the audio it was difficult to differentiate each word. Stick with it.

Raw and beautiful

I’ve lost two children. This is the most realistic account of grief and being human I’ve yet to read. I feel less alone after having read it.

The writing

Fabulously written and performed. So painful yet the poetic style drew me in to its raw beauty…her truth