Product Description

This book is the winner of the Wales book of the year. Loss, grief and love are the themes of this remarkable memoir from one of Britain's most distinguished poets. Some months after Dannie Abse's wife Joan died in a car accident in June 2005, he began to write a diary which is both a record of present grief and a portrait of marriage which lasted more than fifty years. It is an extraordinary document, painful but celebratory; funny as well as sad, bursting with joy as well as sorrow and full of a deep understanding of what it means to be human.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #182629 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
`remarkable and tender'
--Sunday Times

Review
It's a very moving document, suffused with the pain of losing Joan, at the same time acknowledging her continuing presence'

Owen Sheers, Independent on Sunday
'For all its painful honesty, a surprisingly joyful and compelling
book... Imbued with all the best qualities of what it means to human and in
love'

Customer Reviews

A moving tribute
Dr Dannie Abse has written a moving tribute to his departed beloved partner after 50 years. As a retired psychiatrist I found his self-assessment of his bereaved state deeply touching, particularly because I and my wife have been together nigh on sixty years in a loving companionship too. A reason for reading this book was my anticipation how I might cope if my wife predeceases me and I am left, like Dr Abse, musing over wonderful memories. I liked the way he juxtaposed the present with the past in his diary, and the appropriate, often amusing, anecdotes interspersed throughout. My belated sincere condolences and my hope that his loss has been alleviated by writing and sharing with others. PS: I must sadly confess to being a poetry-philistine, but I'm sure the "poetry-enamoured" will appreciate Dr Abse's poems.

A moving tribute to lost love
Dannie Abse lost his beloved wife Joan in a car accident in which he survived. Here he charts his progress in a kind of diary/memoir of the year after her death.

It is gentle, emotional without being sentimental and full of wonderful poems (not just his own) and quotations from which he has found strength or the perfect way to express his feelings.

This is not just a book about grief, it is a book which celebrates and reveres a deep and lasting love for another human being, one which shaped his life and understanding. His attempts to navigate life without that presence is truly touching.

A difficult territory
This moving journal charts Abse's reactions during the year after he lost his wife, Joan, in a traffic accident. Having lost my daughter in a traffic accident nearly a year ago I found it comforting to read his words - it made me realise that the range of feelings I have are not unique: that I am not mad ... but that the grief one feels when an innocent loved one is killed in this way is complex and long-lasting. He is an eloquent guide to this difficult territory ... at times, so 'eloquent' that I found myself having to consult the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in order to understand some of his words - and this, despite having a master's degree in English! However, maybe such a difficult journey needs difficult language to try to explain things at times.

The journal also includes various poems - both by Abse and other writers -that shed light on his feelings.

This is a moving book - but it is not unremittingly bleak: at times it will make the reader laugh as well as cry. Whilst I obviously found it struck a special chord for me, I don't feel that you have to be grief-stricken in order to appreciate Abse's evocation of his wife's presence and the charting of his journey through the year following her death ... indeed, it would be foolish to make such an assumption, just as it would to make the assumption that a reader has to be old and have ungrateful children in order to appreciate 'King Lear'!

Abse is famous as a poet, but he is a fine writer of prose too, as this journal attests. I recommend the book - buy it - you won't be disappointed.