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After the Eclipse: A Memoir Kindle Edition
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When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse; she took it as a good omen for her and her mother, Crystal. But that moment of darkness foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine. It took twelve years to find the killer. In that time, Sarah rebuilt her life amid abandonment, police interrogations, and the exacting toll of trauma. She dreamed of a trial, but when the day came, it brought no closure. It was not her mother’s death she wanted to understand, but her life. She began her own investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, deep into the darkness of a small American town. “Pull[ing] the reader swiftly along on parallel tracks of mystery and elegy” in After the Eclipse, “Perry succeeds in restoring her mother’s humanity and her own” (The New York Times Book Review).
“Raw and perfect . . . After the Eclipse [has] an eerie, heartbreaking power that it shares with the very best of true crime.” —Laura Miller, Slate
“A gut punch . . . A heartbreaking yet hopeful testament to human resilience.” —Samantha Irby, Marie Claire
“With clear, powerful prose, Perry paints a portrait of unconventional motherhood while questioning society’s handling of violence against women. Reminiscent of Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts, After the Eclipse tells the very human story at the center of a needless crime.”—W Magazine
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHoughton Mifflin Harcourt
- Publication dateSeptember 26, 2017
- File size3106 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A Best Book of the Year by BookPage A Must-Read Title of the Fall by Entertainment Weekly, W Magazine, and the Portland Press Herald A Best Nonfiction Title of the Year from Nylon A Great Nonfiction Title of September by Bustle A Notable Nonfiction Debut of the Year by Poets & Writers A Notable Fall Title by Book Reporter A Barnes & Noble Discover Pick A Publisher’s Weekly Pick of the Week “Stunning . . . A graceful and powerful memorial.”—Entertainment Weekly “After the Eclipse pulls the reader swiftly along on parallel tracks of mystery and elegy . . . Perry’s scrupulous research and painstaking rendering of her experiences make her a trustworthy guide through such emotionally charged terrain. She’s also a wonderful writer with an assured sense of when to zoom in to her body’s somatic response for a piercing immediacy and when to pull back to convey the measured perspective gained through the distance of time. Many moments of beauty and tenderness rise up through the darkness. In the end, Perry succeeds in restoring her mother’s humanity, and her own.”—Bliss Broyard, New York Times Book Review “A gut punch . . . A heartbreaking yet hopeful testament to human resilience.”—Samantha Irby, Marie Claire “After the Eclipse is both a heartfelt memoir and a suspenseful story. With its many twist and turns, the mystery of this murdered woman and the small town of people who knew and loved her, it feels like I’m reading a prequel to Twin Peaks.”—Gabourey Sidibe, Book of the Month Club “Raw and perfect . . . I’ve never read a better depiction of how a sudden, violent event rips through a human being’s apprehension of reality . . . [It’s] an unfussy, richly textured remembrance of a town, a family, a particular place on the planet that its author knows all the way down to her bones—the strengths of a classic memoir . . . After the Eclipse [has] an eerie, heartbreaking power that it shares with the very best of true crime.”—Laura Miller, Slate “Perry weaves together her painful memories of that night with archival research and journalistic interviews to not only piece together the details of her mother’s death, but illuminate the woman she was before it. With clear, powerful prose, Perry paints a portrait of unconventional motherhood while questioning society’s handling of violence against women. Reminiscent of Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts, After the Eclipse tells the very human story at the center of a needless crime.”—W Magazine “Profoundly moving . . . Explores the systemic misogyny and classism in small-town America, and revolves around the life of Perry’s mother, Crystal, who shines from the borders of this often unbearably dark story as bright as the sun on a summer day . . . Powerful.”—Nylon “With rich prose, Sarah Perry tackles grief, and how we persevere in the face of tragedy.”—Portland Press Herald  —
About the Author
SARAH PERRY is the author of the memoir After the Eclipse, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Poets & Writers Notable Nonfiction Debut, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. Perry is the recipient of the 2018 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award and a fellowship from the Edward F. Albee Foundation. She holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction from Columbia University and is currently teaching in the graduate program in Creative Writing at the University of North Texas.
Product details
- ASIN : B01N32B5YS
- Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Reprint edition (September 26, 2017)
- Publication date : September 26, 2017
- Language : English
- File size : 3106 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 386 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #222,831 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #179 in Death & Grief (Kindle Store)
- #257 in Biographies & Memoirs of Authors
- #642 in Grief & Bereavement
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Perry is both clear-eyed but compassionate toward the people in her book, including the men who passed in and out of her and her mother’s life even as she critiques the way misogyny contributes to violence against women. I’m stunned at how an author who has lived through such darkness has managed to write with such generosity toward so many. I'm stunned at how simultaneously authentic and gentle she is with her readers.
Like Perry, I grew up poor, in rural Maine. It’s a place I worked hard to escape. And yet this book filled me with aching homesickness for both the people and landscape of my childhood. I couldn't put it down.
Read this exceptional book. It’s timely. It’s wonderful.
My heart aches for the young Sarah; not only for her tremendous loss but for the fact that she really didn't have a soft place to land where she KNEW she was loved AND wanted, where she could be herself, express her fear of the night, her anger and confusion, and her pain. If I'd been her aunt, I'd have just wanted to let her cry, scream, talk etc. I'd have protected her and just known by common sense and instinct that of COURSE nights would be especially hard for this poor girl. I'd have wanted to hug and protect her. I think Tootsie was obviously dealing with her own pain but she wasn't really there for her niece. You don't adopt your niece and then say she is upsetting you so "do you want to go back to Maine now or end of semester?" Then turn around and say "You're leaving now." That is NOT someone deserving of the title of "Aunt" or "family." She and others FAILED Sarah!
The book itself was hard to put down. I have lived in Maine myself for many years and know of the towns mentioned though only been through the area a few times. The story in itself is familiar from the news and compelling. I DO wish that the murder would have been solved much earlier and that people would have been more forthcoming about what they knew if anything.
A solid read!
Top reviews from other countries
You also brought to the fore the very important subject of violence against women. I have talked to many women living on the streets who named sexual abuse and violence as a turning point in their lives. To ease the pain they often turned to drugs, gangs, violence and prostitution. I am proud to befriend them, to listen to their sometimes tearful stories and hold their hands. I wish I could do more.