... unapologetic and unbridled.

Woolf loves her symbols — and she’s good at them.

... eschews any such flattering postmortem revisions in favor of the messy, freeing truth.

From the opening salvo, Woolf makes it clear to readers that this is not going to be a traditional grief memoir. Rather, it is a forthright portrait of one marriage, and the things that came after. From digging desperately through her jewelry drawer in search of the wedding ring she took off years ago to having frank discussions about her dating and sexuality with her four children after their father dies, Woolf takes readers on a journey that is nothing if not unforgettable. Is it comfortable or comforting? No, but it is brutally honest and empowering tale of a woman who emerges from her marriage and her husband’s final illness like a butterfly from a chrysalis—not neatly or painlessly, but nonetheless beautiful to behold.

Woolf is at her best when delving into the fast and brutal progression of Hal’s illness. Her account of his final months is unflinching and brutally precise. Woolf has taken an inventory of the barbaric accouterments of illness, and she presses these details into her scenes like spikes. The barf bags and spit cups, the sponge pops and no-slip socks, the folding canes that give way to tennis-ball-padded walkers and then wheelchairs: It’s a singular category of horror and she nails it.

Woolf skillfully and honestly foreshadows what’s to come when she confesses that she is 'not the first and certainly not the last wife to bury a husband she didn’t want to be married to anymore'.

By turns disturbing and profound, this intimate book about one woman’s path to personal liberation also reveals the sometimes-labyrinthine nature of the bonds that unite people in love and marriage.