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 A Love Song Apr 11, 2009
Anne Roiphe has written a love song for her late husband. Roiphe, author of fifteen previous books and numerous articles, wrote Epilogue as part of her healing process after the sudden loss of her husband. It is written in stream-of-consciousness or journaling style, elegant and lyrical.
She writes of following the formula for the process of healing: visiting with friends; going to the theater and concerts and spending time with her family. But all the while she was wishing to stay at home in misery and sadness, staring out the window or curled up in her bed. She writes of not being able to concentrate, read, or even write. "Is this the thing about being alone that I must get used to--I am not here if no one sees or hears me. Like the proverbial tree in the forest I neither fall nor stand unobserved. But I am observing myself and that should be enough. It isn't."
Roiphe writes of performing tasks that her spouse had always taken care of and reminiscing about what he would have done and what he would have said if he had been present. "Touch. I took it for granted. H. took my arm when we were walking in the street. He took my hand in the movies. He lay his head in my lap...He...." He is present in all of the pages. Humor slyly enters the pages when she writes of her half-hearted attempts to return to the dating game.
Slowly, through the year after the death of her husband, H, she regains her equilibrium and begins to cherish life again. Roiphe's is a book for me to keep. Some day, unfortunately, I will either need to re-read it, or pass it on to a friend who is in need. Here is not only a memoir, but a tool written with beauty, great sadness and regeneration.
by Judith Helburn
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Too Much Self-Pity Jan 27, 2009
This memoir is the story of Anne Roiphe, a novelist, who at 69 years of age, lost her husband of almost 40 years rather unexpectedly. She was unprepared for life on her own, and she found it difficult to piece together the basics for a new life, as her grief at times seemed unbearable.
Several months after her husband's death, her daughters placed a personal ad in the New York Review of Books. They described their mother as a writer, and an attractive woman who loved the ocean and books. What follows are several detailed meetings with new acquaintances, often humorous to some degree, but none of these lead to a new satisfying relationship.
I expected that this book would be a story about a widow who made a new life for herself after the death of her spouse, but although parts of this memoir were very good, I did find a good portion of the book to be one big pity-party. I realize that there are various stages of grief that one must pass through, before moving on to another stage in life, however, Ms. Roiphe was just so dependent on her former husband that I got annoyed by that: she never unlocked her door before, because he always did it; she never hailed a cab alone in NYC, because he did it. It all just seemed a bit much. Despite these criticisms, I do see how this book might comfort someone who has experienced a recent loss
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Exactly what I needed!!! Jan 16, 2009
I loved this book!! ..it's so "for real". I was widowed 16 months ago and I swear this author finished my sentences when it came to candidly describing the day-to-day. I am 66 yrs old, married for 45 years, my spouse died 8 weeks after his cancer diagnosis. Moving from shock to the "reality of mourning" to "creating a new life" are amazingly captured in this book. She honestly walks you thru her days of aloneness, silence and thought process. I couldn't put this book down - it challenged me that I will make it thru this time and create my own new, normal, life.
Sharon Sprunger, Las Vegas, NV
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Almost Too Ambitious Dec 29, 2008
Obviously, grief and loss impact the entirety of one's life. Roiphe, however, is at her best when she writes of concrete detail -- the objects of everyday life surrounding her mother on her mother's death bed, for instance -- but goes wide of the mark when venturing into matters of cosmic import.
16 of 17 found the following review helpful:
 Lots of self-pity Dec 29, 2008
When Anne Roiphe's long-time husband dies, she writes that men are her "necessary other," and wonders: "Could it be that a woman without a man is always on the edge of appearing as a figure of fun, a disappointed woman like a nun or the obese girl that stays at home the night of the senior prom?" Ms. Rophie was so dependent on her late husband that she's unable to unlock the door of her apartment by herself or hail a cab. She's never done her own taxes or gone to the movies alone. If you're looking for a book about widowhood with a feminist perspective, expect to be disappointed.
Although I'm sympathetic to Rophie's loss, this book is filled with mean-spirited self-pity. Rophie owns an Upper West side co-op and a house in the Hamptons that she is able to sell after her husband's death. She's certainly in much better off than the majority of widowed women in this country (or the world, for that matter). But does her suffering give her empathy or insight into the lives of the less fortunate? No: "I have trouble staying at such a distance from myself that I can worry more about the orphans in Ethiopia that I do about who will have dinner with me tomorrow evening." Nuns and overweight teenage girls aren't the only objects of Rophie's scorn. She writes cruelly about an older woman neighbor with "yellow stained white hair" whose "back is bent over at a forty-five degree angle" with osteoporosis--"I should do more than nod and smile when I pass her. I should speak. But I don't." Much of the book is written in such short, flat uninflected sentences. Roiphe's life as a widow is one disappointment after another; her daughters live forty-five minutes away in Brooklyn and are "busy," and the men she hooks up with through New York Review of Books personal ads have protruding ears, kiss the wrong way or have messy personal histories. Even her sainted late husband comes in for criticism: "A more perfect man might have left me a life insurance policy." But there's some good news: Roiphe actually goes to the movies alone and enjoys it: "I am glad I went to the movies. I can go alone whenever I want." Much of the book is devoted to her attempts to meet men through personal ads or online. It feels sordid and a little sad. Rophie comes across as a self-absorbed woman with little insight into her own behavior.
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