MEMORIAL DAYS A Memoir

When novelist Geraldine Brooks's husband, Tony Horwitz, dies while on a book tour, she gets the call from a harried medical resident who can't get off the phone fast enough. Brooks alternates between memories of those first days and her life three years later on an isolated island in Australia, where she finally takes time to focus on grieving. Listening feels particularly intimate. Brooks's performance is heartfelt and beautiful, both precise and expansive. There is shock--Tony was only 60 and went to the gym avidly; indignation at the suggestion that a guardian ad litem is necessary for custody of Brooks's son; and gratitude at the unexpected gift of finding Tony's scrawl in the margins of books, like a conversation, even though Geraldine would never treat a book in such a cavalier manner. A.B. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2025]