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Lifesaving for Beginners: A Memoir Kindle Edition
When Anne Edelstein was forty-two, her mother, a capable swimmer in good health, drowned while snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. Caring for two children of her own, Anne suddenly found herself grieving not only for her emotionally distant mother but also for her beloved younger brother Danny, who’d killed himself violently years before—and wrestling with the past and her family’s legacy of mental illness as well as the emotional well-being of her children. Part memoir and part meditation on joy and grief, Lifesaving for Beginners will resonate with anyone who’s struggled to come to terms with their family and their place in the world.
“While dramatic events set this memoir in motion, the triumph of Lifesaving for Beginners is that its heart lies not in the large ruptures of life but in the reconciliations that arrive quietly and routinely. I admire—and envy—the writing in this book. Its smooth surface belies its depths, much like the open waters Edelstein swims in as she seeks her own calmness and consolation.” —Kathleen Finneran, author of The Tender Land
“An unforgettable—and unputdownable—portrait of a singular American family. Reminiscent of Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments and Daphne Merkin’s This Close to Happy.” —Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year
“[This book] is indeed a lifesaver.” —Mark Epstein, author of Going to Pieces without Falling Apart
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRed Hen Press
- Publication dateNovember 7, 2017
- File size2448 KB
Editorial Reviews
Review
"It is no surprise that 'Lifesaving for Beginners' is an deftly crafted, engagingly presented, intensely personal memoir that is a truly riveting read from beginning to end, and an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to both community and academic library Contemporary American Biography collections."--Midwest Book Review
"While dramatic events set this memoir in motion, the triumph of Lifesaving for Beginners is that its heart lies not in the large ruptures of life but in the reconciliations that arrive quietly and routinely. I admire--and envy--the writing in this book. Its smooth surface belies its depths, much like the open waters Edelstein swims in as she seeks her own calmness and consolation."--Kathleen Finneran, author of The Tender Land
"Anne Edelstein's remarkable debut is an unforgettable--and unputdownable--portrait of a singular American family. Reminiscent of Vivian Gornick's Fierce Attachments and Daphne Merkin's This Close to Happy, this slyly powerful memoir reads like a conversation with your kindest, funniest, most incisive friend. --Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year and A Fortunate Age
"Loss, grief, and 'the proof of love' are at stake in this poignant and penetrating memoir of a daughter's quest to understand her elusive mother, the suicide of her beloved brother, and the mystery at the heart of the will to live."--Jill Bialosky, author of History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished life
"As if in the eye of a hurricane, Anne Edelstein writes courageously about the deaths that swirl about her. Calm, clear, moving and oh-so poignant, Lifesaving for Beginners is a breathtaking portrait of our fruitless efforts to shield each other from the most painful aspects of life. Her book points in another direction and it is indeed a lifesaver."--Mark Epstein, author of The Trauma of Everyday Life and Going to Pieces without Falling Apart
"In this stunningly eloquent memoir, Edelstein grieves for her mother's drowning to unearth an even deeper grief--the one for her brother who killed himself fifteen years before. In what can be the sometimes garrote of family (as well as its absolute joys) alongside a legacy of mental illness, Lifesaving for Beginners is a graceful GPS for finding your safe shore, no matter how distant it seems."--Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World
Review
"It is no surprise that 'Lifesaving for Beginners' is an deftly crafted, engagingly presented, intensely personal memoir that is a truly riveting read from beginning to end, and an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to both community and academic library Contemporary American Biography collections."―Midwest Book Review
“While dramatic events set this memoir in motion, the triumph of Lifesaving for Beginners is that its heart lies not in the large ruptures of life but in the reconciliations that arrive quietly and routinely. I admire―and envy―the writing in this book. Its smooth surface belies its depths, much like the open waters Edelstein swims in as she seeks her own calmness and consolation.”―Kathleen Finneran, author of The Tender Land
“Anne Edelstein’s remarkable debut is an unforgettable―and unputdownable―portrait of a singular American family. Reminiscent of Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments and Daphne Merkin’s This Close to Happy, this slyly powerful memoir reads like a conversation with your kindest, funniest, most incisive friend. ―Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year and A Fortunate Age
“Loss, grief, and ‘the proof of love’ are at stake in this poignant and penetrating memoir of a daughter’s quest to understand her elusive mother, the suicide of her beloved brother, and the mystery at the heart of the will to live.”―Jill Bialosky, author of History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished life
“As if in the eye of a hurricane, Anne Edelstein writes courageously about the deaths that swirl about her. Calm, clear, moving and oh-so poignant, Lifesaving for Beginners is a breathtaking portrait of our fruitless efforts to shield each other from the most painful aspects of life. Her book points in another direction and it is indeed a lifesaver.”―Mark Epstein, author of The Trauma of Everyday Life and Going to Pieces without Falling Apart
“In this stunningly eloquent memoir, Edelstein grieves for her mother’s drowning to unearth an even deeper grief―the one for her brother who killed himself fifteen years before. In what can be the sometimes garrote of family (as well as its absolute joys) alongside a legacy of mental illness, Lifesaving for Beginners is a graceful GPS for finding your safe shore, no matter how distant it seems.”―Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I wonder about whether to call my uncle Nate to tell him right away, or if I should wait until morning. The news about my mother is strange, but my family is used to death. Unbelievably, Nate is now the only one of my mother’s siblings who is still alive. My aunt Cecile died only a year and a half ago from a quick spreading cancer, my uncle Jack eight years before that when he committed suicide, and now my mother in this mysterious drowning. They’ve all died younger than they were supposed to, my mother the oldest in life and in death at age sixty-eight. And then there’s the death that has always been the hardest, my brother Danny who was only twenty-two when he died. Shocked as I am about my mother, I see no need to act rashly. It’s 2:00 a.m. so I decide I might as well give Nate the rest of the night’s sleep before calling him to say what’s happened.
I just lie there flat on my back, solitary, Roy having drifted back to sleep. I stare up at the ceiling, trying as hard as I can to imagine it―the figure of my mother in the beautiful blue sea under a big bright sky.
At 5:30 a.m. when I hear Eva’s cry, I take her to the other side of the apartment where we can be quiet and alone. Together on the living room couch, her body falls back to sleep on top of me. The early sun begins to light up the room. I look out at the Hudson River, wide and gray and almost stagnant this morning. My mother is now dead, I tell myself.
Eva, very much alive, sleeps peacefully on my chest, her warm breathing delicious. For a few moments it makes sense, there’s an order to this picture. My mother with her plush body that once gave birth to me is on one end. Eva, a year-and-a-half-old perfect bundle of life, is at the other. And I’m in between. But then the logic is lost. My mother, whose life has forever been entangled with mine, has just drowned on the other side of the world.
Product details
- ASIN : B07DLGLK53
- Publisher : Red Hen Press (November 7, 2017)
- Publication date : November 7, 2017
- Language : English
- File size : 2448 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 219 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,598,534 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #510 in Counseling & Psychology eBooks on Bipolar Disorder
- #1,922 in Coping with Bipolar Disorder
- #3,889 in Dysfunctional Families (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Anne Edelstein works as a literary agent in New York City, where she lives with her family. This is her first book.
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She had a loving relationship with her younger brother, Danny, and she tries to reconcile his suicide (decades before her mother’s death) as well. This loss might be the biggest resolution that Edelstein is seeking. Although the family knew for some time that their youngest member was struggling mentally, Danny was the family darling, cheerleader and comic relief. She writes that when she and and Ted, her other brother, “lost” Danny on a vacation, she was beset with fear: ”We had to remain together. Without one of us, our equilibrium would be lost” (84).
As she struggles with her own issues with death and closure, she must figure out what to tell her young children about these losses and the family history of self-harm.
"For my mother, who had absorbed so much fatality, death itself had remained an open, unresolved chapter that just kept on resurfacing and causing more injuries along the way" (48). `She describes her mother’s outlook in this way but after reading this memoir, I think it describes Edelstein as well.
As Edlestein is an editor, I found the structure of the memoir to be a bit odd. Sometimes I felt I was reading a stream-of-consciousness free write. Sometimes I felt like I was reading stand alone essays loosely strung together with a swimming metaphor.
I received this book as an audible book for an honest and unbiased review. ~Amy's Bookshelf Reviews