Everything I’ve Learned about Grief
Everything I’ve Learned about Grief
Frida BlomA heart-rendering auto-fictional debut for the readers of Sheila Heti’s Motherhood about a young couple battling involuntary childlessness and losing oneself in maddening heartbreak.
F is 28 years old, works night shifts as a care worker and has had her period around 210 times. Pretty much as many times as she’s fallen apart. When she met P, it was an instant connection, as if they’d always known each other. For their first date he makes her his famous risotto, and soon they are dancing, drinking, fucking and celebrating the new year together. When she accidentally becomes pregnant, he’s not ready, and so they decide to wait to have children.
Time passes, and even if they are both more ready than they’ve ever been, it turns out that maybe they’ve waited too long. Soon, all they live and breathe is disappointment, and F tries to remember who she used to be, wonders who she has become, and if a marriage can survive the decisions that we make.
EVERYTHING I’VE LEARNED ABOUT GRIEF is a fierce debut novel about involuntary childlessness, about when a life begins and ends, and the breakdown of a young marriage.
With urgency and stunning honesty, Frida Blom writes of a young couple caught in the jaws of society’s expectations and the fateful choices they have made, ultimately asking if it is possible to live with another person when you have been made into the worst version of yourself. The questions of what motherhood is and when a life begins power one of the strongest auto-fictional novels of the last few years.
