“I keep paying his cell phone bill for a year and a half afterwards, because I don’t want to lose the text messages, but I don’t have the heart to read and transfer them. The phone goes dead and gets lost somewhere in the house.” The “afterwards” is the sudden death of Elizabeth Alexander’s husband at the age of 50. The Light of the World–Alexander’s world–was her husband, Ficre. Ficre was a chef and a painter. He loved books and bookstores. He loved his two sons. But Ficre really, really loved Elizabeth Alexander. His love for her springs off the pages of this book. Alexander falls in love with Ficre at first sight. I’ve read Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Joyce Carol Oates’ A Widow’s Story, two moving memoirs of the loss of a spouse. The Light of the World may well be the most heart-felt of them all. Diane recommended this book to me after she read it. I’m glad she did.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
I
“Last Night on Earth”
II
Honeycomb
III
“The Edges of Me in the Hands of My Wife”
IV
Ghost of All Bookstores
V
The Plum Blossom
I read an excerpt/essay in The New Yorker and it was excellent: poignant, sensitive, with a wonderful sense of who her husband was. This book is on my tbr list right now.
Deb, you’ll be as moved as I was at the portrait Elizabeth Alexander creates about her husband.
The other two left me in a deep depression. I will save it for a cheery period.
Patti, I found THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD to have a different tone from Didion’s and Oates’ books. Sad, but not depressing.
Don’t think I could handle this one right now.
Bill, some of the passages in THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD share the same emotional power as your writing about Judy.
I read the Didion and will probably read this, now that I know about it, although I can’t promise how that will go.
Jeff, I think you’ll find Elizabeth Alexander’s book far different from Didion’s THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING.
Sounds very good, not sure if I’ll try it though. The Didion book was sad.
Rick, books of this sort are always sad. But Elizabeth Alexander celebrates the life of her husband in a very special way.
I read manly books in a manly way written for men by men. You can have this weepy chick lit.