A thoughtful and touching memoir covering ground from love to loss, Jason Rosenthal's memoir is meant for those also in the recovery process from losing a loved one. Unfortunately, I found it very difficult to get invested in this novel for reasons I detail below, but that doesn't take away from its significance to the community of people who needed his words and this story.
Jason B. Rosenthal is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dear Boy, cowritten with his daughter, Paris. He is the board chair of the Amy Krouse Rosenthal Foundation, which supports both childhood literacy and research in early detection of ovarian cancer. A lawyer, public speaker, and devoted father of three, he is passionate about helping others find ways to fill their blank spaces as he continues to fill his own. Jason resides in Chicago, a city he is proud to call home. To learn more, visit amykrousrosenthalfoundation.org.
On May 3, 2017, Amy Krouse Rosenthal penned an op-ed piece for the New York Times' "Modern Love" column—"You May Want to Marry My Husband." It appeared ten days before her death from ovarian cancer. A heartbreaking, wry, brutally honest, and creative play on a personal ad—in which a dying wife encouraged her husband to go on and find happiness after her demise—the column quickly went viral, reaching more than five million people worldwide. In My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, Jason describes what came next: his commitment to respecting Amy's wish, even as he struggled with her loss. Surveying his life before, with, and after Amy, Jason ruminates on love, the pain of watching a loved one suffer, and what it means to heal—how he and their three children, despite their profound sorrow, went on. Jason's emotional journey offers insights on dying and death and the excruciating pain of losing a soulmate, and illuminates the lessons he learned. As he reflects on Amy's gift to him—a fresh start to fill his empty space with a new story—Jason describes how he continues to honor Amy's life and her last wish, and how he seeks to appreciate every day and live in the moment while trying to help others coping with loss. My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me is the poignant, unreserved, and inspiring story of a great love, the aftermath of a marriage ending too soon, and how a surviving partner eventually found a new perspective on life's joys in the wake of tremendous loss.
Rosenthal split the memoir into two halves—his life with his wife, and then his life after. This decision to detail everything, from their first meeting to his most recent moments without her, made for a very emotional read. It is very clear to every reader how much Rosenthal loved his wife, and cherished the life they built together. This makes the moments he wrote about after her death more impactful, and certainly as inspiring as the blurb describes the book.
As I mentioned before, though, this book didn't land for me. There are probably some background reasons as to why, of course—I'm not married so I don't have any similar experiences to Rosenthal's story; and I am blessed to say that I have not lost anyone I have loved yet. However, I believe my parents have the same type of beautiful, soulmate love story as Rosenthal and his wife, and so I had a hard time believing the fantasy of the depiction. This claim might sound counterintuitive, but hear me out—my parents love one another so much, but they will admit that the other has faults, and that not everything in their relationship is perfect. I would like to think if either of them described the other in a long form way, they'd include everything—the wonderful bits and the less than ideal, because all of that is what makes a relationship and another person complicated and beautiful. I didn't feel like we got all of those complex details from Rosenthal's depiction of his life with his wife and family. I had a hard time believing everything really was that perfect—everything felt glossy, and I would have liked a bit more grittiness, in order to truly relate to the life he described. Now, of course the depiction might seem like fantasy because no one wants to talk ill of the dead. I understand that. But even in understanding it, this move made it difficult to relate to the story, on top of how I don't have any similar experiences.
The other thing that didn't quite sit right with me was the strange digression partway through when the author criticizes how other people treat people who are going through a difficult experience. The entire novel had a very set tone, as emotional and descriptive. This digression very much did not fit into the novel's tone and mood for me, as it felt rather accusatory and a bit self-important, as if the author is the number one source for how people should handle tough situations from the outside looking in. I understand that this was his experience with how people treated him, but the second he prescribed his opinions as advice missed a mark for me that still doesn't sit well with me.
Maybe I would feel differently about this novel at a different point in my life, but I hope I never have such a devastating experience that's similar enough to drive me to pick up this novel again. I don't want to undermine the novel's success and the story, and how helpful this novel was to so many people. It just wasn't for me.
For more about the author, visit amykrousrosenthalfoundation.org.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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