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Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Perdita: On Loss

Perdita: On Loss

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralDeath & Dying

Publisher Price: $24.95

ISBN10: 1804296082
ISBN13: 9781804296080
Publisher: Verso
Published: Oct 29 2024
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.60
Height: 0.90 Width: 5.90 Depth: 8.60
Language: English
An intense literary memoir of love and grief

Our marriage was, from any conventional point of view, wildly implausible; and you, my dear son, are the miraculous product of this beautiful, rather crazy, and all too brief love affair. When Dylan Riley received the devastating news that his wife, Emanuela, had cancer, he turned to writing to express the anguish and disarray brought by her worsening symptoms and then her passing. Perdita, composed for their teenage son, Eamon, is the result of this attempt to represent loss. It is at once a portrait of youth, a lyrical memoir of a marriage, and a raw and moving account of bereavement.

Riley describes cancer, Perdita's central antagonist, as a pitiless opponent, draining hope of its power and reducing it to self-delusion. Its course forces a progressive foreshortening of time. Next year might be terrible, but there can be a few good months now; tomorrow will likely be bad, but let's focus on today.

In this memoir, the disease provokes a broader set of reflections on the openness, contingency, and pain of the human condition, a status defined by the context of mortality, both our own and that of those we love.

Also from

Riley, Dylan

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Biographies General