“This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending,” writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the … birth of her first child.
This book is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover from this kind of loss? Of course you don’t–but you go on. And if you have ever experienced loss or love someone who has, the company of this remarkable book will help you go on.
With humor and warmth and unfailing generosity, McCracken considers the nature of love and grief. She opens her heart and leaves all of ours the richer for it.
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Everyone should read this book because everyone is going to face a tragedy someday–their own, or someone else’s. McCracken can’t offer you a map because this is a territory where all maps will fail, but she traces her own journey in crystalline yet soft, thoughtful and blunt, painful yet compulsively readable sentences. This is a short book with short chapters, but you may want to read it slowly. You’ll come away with a better understanding of the strange side of grief and what kinds of reactions make it hurt worse, and which make it survivable.
A most unusual and beautifully written memoir by a woman whose baby died during the 9th month of pregnancy. No holds barred – the author shows us the trauma she experienced and how she pulled herself into healing.
It’s hard to know where to start reviewing a book like this. A memoir is someone’s personal experience at life. Therefore, it isn’t up to the reader to critique its content or have opinions on whether or not it was right or wrong the unraveling of its “plot.” I’m certain that the author would not have chosen this particular plot twist. The reader is merely choosing to be along for the ride — a passenger to the pilot and navigator who has been tasked with this mission and zero control over its trajectory.
What I liked about “An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination”:
An easy read despite the subject matter – There is no spoiler here. This book is the story of one mother’s heartrending story which included the stillbirth of her first son. There was an honesty and a lightness to her words that captured both the inescapable heartache and the wish of a mother to be allowed to remember the pleasures of what limited moments of joy she had with her child, even if that child had not yet entered the outside world. I am struggling to find the words that will express how…conversational the tone of this book was and that surprised me. Memoirs can be dry, especially if the author has an over-inflated sense of how interesting they actually are. Knowing how much to reveal and possessing the gift the deliver it well.
It is a lesson in dealing with grief – Not in dealing with your own, not exactly. In that sense, it illustrates that the grief process is as random and varied as there are people on this planet. There is no set way to feel it or move through it or exist after it. How Ms. McCracken handles grief is her own process and serves as a reminder that there is no wrong way to do it. The lesson, though, is more for those encountering the grief of another. It’s so hard to know what to say and while we grapple with our own inadequacy and discomfort, we convince ourselves that if we might say it wrong, we’d be better saying nothing. Many times in life, that might be useful advice, but in grief, sometimes simply saying “I don’t have the words” is enough.
What I didn’t care for:
As I said, I cannot be critical of the content. It belongs solely to the author. I can only comment on whether the delivery is engaging, which it was. What I struggled with was more personal. I felt a disconnect from the topic because I cannot personally identify with it. I could sympathize with how awful it was but I couldn’t seem to…feel anything beyond that. I can say that about two-thirds of the way through it was impossible *not* to feel for her.
Grief is something we all understand, even if we’ve never experienced someone’s particular sort of grief. The voice, the honesty, the lack of assumption that this is everyone’s grief experience make it easy to relate to what Ms. McCracken shares. This book is clearly part tribute to her first son as much as it is a part of her personal grief process. At times, it felt almost too personal with its exposed vulnerability, like reading someone’s diary, though I was aware she published it. It felt almost like a training for handling the grief of others, as it allows the reader to come to terms with being in the room with that grief, yet not having to put words to the feelings or look their pain in the face.
One important thing to note: If you’re avoiding grief of your own or refusing to look it dead in the eyes, this is not a book you’re ready for because it does those things for the author, and in reading them, you may be forced to see your own, no matter the source of that grief.