The Rules of Inheritance - Hardcover

Smith, Claire Bidwell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594630887 ISBN 13: 9781594630880

Publisher: Hudson st Pr, 2012

Synopsis

A 2012 Books for a Better Life nominee
A resonant memoir of the ways untimely good-byes echo through the years by a writer who has considered every nuance of grief.

At age fourteen, Claire Bidwell Smith-an only child- learned that both of her parents had cancer. The fear of becoming a family of one before she came of age compels Claire to make a series of fraught choices, set against the glittering backdrop of New York and Los Angeles - and the pall of regret. When the inevitable happens, and Claire is alone in the world, she is inconsolable at the revelation that suddenly she is no one's special person. It is only when Claire eventually falls in love, marries, and becomes a mother that she emerges from the fog of grief.

Defying a conventional framework, this story is told using the five stages of grief as a window into Smith's experience. As in the very best memoirs, the author's powerful and exquisite writing renders personal events into universal experience.

About this title

Product Description

hard to find

Review

"Gritty, poetic, and illuminating." -"O Magazine "
"A brilliant memoir." -BookReporter
"In "The Rules of Inheritance", Claire Bidwell Smith takes us on a heartbreaking journey into grief's deepest waters and then shows us how she found her way back to hope's shores. With courageous vulnerability and uncompromising authenticity, Smith demonstrates how she transformed tragic misfortune into a rite of passage." -Jillian Lauren, author of the "New York Times" bestselling memoir, "Some Girls: My Life in a Harem "
"Vivid, real and gripping." -"BlackBook Magazine"
"This beautiful memoir is about what we inherit-the love as well as the sorrow and loss that are an inevitable part of human connection. In lucid, unsentimental prose, Claire Bidwell Smith maps out the story of her abrupt and rocky coming-of-age with just the right amount of intimacy and distance. This book will stay with me." -Dani Shapiro, "New York Times" bestselling author of "Devotion"
"A searingly honest, poignant and poetic chronicle of love and loss, examining what it feels like to be 'nobody's most important person.'" -Susan Shapiro, author of" Lighting Up" and "Five Men Who Broke My Heart "

"
"The Rules of Inheritance" is a graceful and gritty, and ultimately quite uplifting, exploration of grief. Smith writes gorgeously about the existential tug between life and death, hope and fear, honesty and escape that defined more than a decade of her young life. At once profoundly personal and exquisitely universal, this story will touch all of us, not just those of us who have faced similar losses." -Aidan Donnelly Rowley, author of "Life After Yes "
"A powerful, moving memoir of overcoming grief and loss." -"Booklist", Starred Review
"In this deeply reflective, anguished memoir, L.A. journalist and psychotherapist Smith revisits the staggered death of her two parents from cancer as steps in the process of grieving.Smith's prose possesses a blistering power, rendering this youthful memoir an affecting journey into loss." -"Publisher's Weekly "
"Claire Bidwell Smith has written a beautiful book; it's a perfectly crafted story -- not about grief, but how to walk out of grief with your soul intact; it's not a lamentation, but a lesson. "The Rules of Inheritance "should be required reading for anybody who's trying to get their arms around a big sadness." -Darin Strauss, Author of "Half a Life "

Edition details

• Publisher: Hudson st Pr
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1594630887
• ISBN 13: 9781594630880
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304