May 2008: Books About Motherhood

Comfort: A Journey Through Grief (W.W. Norton & Company)

By Ann Hood

How does a mother wrap her head around the death of her 5-year-old daughter? How can she summon up the energy to make it through the next minute, let alone the next hour, day, week or month? This is the searing, ghastly task undertaken by Ann Hood in her new memoir, Comfort.

It was a humid April day in 2002 when Hood's daughter, Grace, came down with a virulent form of strep. Thirty-six hours later, the child was dead. People came over with casseroles, wine, chocolate and sage words. Then they left, and that was when Hood's real grieving began. Comfort is part journal, part keening, part repetition of three truly unbelievable words: Grace Is Dead.

In a scant 187 pages, Hood takes us back and forth in time in a seamless, page-turning exhale that contains mouthy stories about her parents, her husband, her marriage, a life in New York, a move to Providence, tattoos and spiritual quests, against the backdrop of a torturing grief. I unexpectedly read the book in one sitting.

Sometimes I thought that Hood could never really recover from losing Grace. And it's easy to see why maybe she wouldn't. But though Hood travels two steps forward and one step back, she does eventually heal and learn that there's new life to be enjoyed -- and in her capable hands, savored.

I don't want to spoil anything for the reader, but this book gave me a whole new appreciation for pasta shells with butter and Parmesan cheese. And "Eight Days a Week," from the Beatles. I think you'll feel the same way.
-- Roberta Caploe

Buy Comfort: A Journey Through Grief