The Mahogany Pod; One Thousand Days and One Cup of Tea; Good Grief â reviews
Jill Hopper and Arif in Wales: âAs their love affair began, it was already ending.â Photograph: Jill Hopper
Jill Hopper and Arif in Wales: âAs their love affair began, it was already ending.â Photograph: Jill Hopper
Three very different accounts of bereavement â by Jill Hopper, Vanessa Moore, and Catherine Mayer and Anne Mayer Bird â are by turns heart-rending, compassionate and forthright
Sun 7 Mar 2021 04.00 EST
It is no accident that during the pandemic â this extended, unstable period of losses â many books about grief are being published. Grief is a spur to a writer: a means of working through mourning and, in some cases, of continuing a personâs life on the page. There can be no prescription for grief, no âhow toâ wisdom, although psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross observed, in 1969, that it tends to evolve through five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. She was also, later, at pains to point out that grief is personal: âThere is not a typical response to loss as there is no typical loss.â Now, three books on the subject of losing a partner coincide and they are fascinating partly because each is as individual as grief itself.