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The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story
At once a personal account of Edwidge Danticat's mother and a deeply considered reckoning of how to write about death, The Art of Death moves outward from her mother's cancer diagnosis and sifts through Danticat's writing life. Danticat circles the many forms death takes, shifting fluidly from examples that range from Toni Morrison's Sula to Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, to deliver a moving tribute and work of astute criticism that will profoundly alter all who encounter it.
181 pages, Paperback
First published July 11, 2017
About the author
Edwidge Danticat
117 books2,535 followersEdwidge Danticat was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was twelve. She is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; and The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner. She is also the editor of The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures.
Danticat earned a degree in French Literature from Barnard College, where she won the 1995 Woman of Achievement Award, and later an MFA from Brown University. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughters.
Danticat earned a degree in French Literature from Barnard College, where she won the 1995 Woman of Achievement Award, and later an MFA from Brown University. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 144 reviews
March 17, 2022
Appreciated Edwidge Danticat’s honest words about grieving her mother as I go through my own grief process. In this book she intertwines some writing about losing her mother with analysis of how other writers describe death in their works. Though I found the analysis portion a bit distracting from Danticat’s writing about her mother’s passing, I liked the intelligence of her commentary as well as how she emphasized the importance of including specific detail to help readers feel more connected to those who have died. Her writing about her mother, while on the briefer side, shows the love they had for one another. I hope writing this book felt cathartic or at least meaningful to Danticat in her grieving process.
August 22, 2017
One of those "tiny" books, dimension-wise, The Art of Death is a quick read. What art is there in dying, you ask? Well, Danticat is more about the literary treatment of death in all its manifestations (alone, together, by accident, by your own hand, by murderers, etc.). Thus, the book offers many allusions to writers past and present, along with edifying quotes to show what the author means.
You may think reading such a book is morbid (and certainly, people who see the cover while you're reading it will get that just-swallowed-a-lemon look and ask, "Why so morose?" or, if they're clever, "Light beach reading, I see"), but really, what could be more humdrum and everyday than reading about death as usual? After all, death goes on, as the saying goes, and only fools hide from it.
One quote I liked came late in the book from the Canadian author Margaret Atwood:
"All writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated, deep down, by a fear of and a fascination with mortality--by a desire to make the risky trip to the Underworld, and to bring something or someone back from the dead." Adds Danticat: "In other words, even when we are not writing about death, we are still writing about death. After all, death is always the eventual outcome, the final conclusion of every story."
Meaning: even if your novel, play, short story, essay, or poem seems focused on the joy of life, that joy is writing more deeply into a plot that has the same conclusion. Yes, the conclusion looks different for each of us, but once past the actual doing, amounts to the same.
As a writer, it's of some consolation to me, whose poetry has been called "dark" by some. I wasn't even aware of it when writing, and humor IS in my work, too, but it seems some readers are surprised by the reminder. Buddhists, I think, would take it in stride, because acknowledging and accepting is the way.
As for this book, it is framed in the story of Danticat's own mother's death. She moves from literature to her mother, literature to her mother, occasionally pausing for other big death events like the earthquakes in Japan and Haiti (as well as 9/11).
All in all, not depressing at all. We are comrades in arms, after all, enjoying our brief, shining moments and our shared destinies. As we should.
You may think reading such a book is morbid (and certainly, people who see the cover while you're reading it will get that just-swallowed-a-lemon look and ask, "Why so morose?" or, if they're clever, "Light beach reading, I see"), but really, what could be more humdrum and everyday than reading about death as usual? After all, death goes on, as the saying goes, and only fools hide from it.
One quote I liked came late in the book from the Canadian author Margaret Atwood:
"All writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated, deep down, by a fear of and a fascination with mortality--by a desire to make the risky trip to the Underworld, and to bring something or someone back from the dead." Adds Danticat: "In other words, even when we are not writing about death, we are still writing about death. After all, death is always the eventual outcome, the final conclusion of every story."
Meaning: even if your novel, play, short story, essay, or poem seems focused on the joy of life, that joy is writing more deeply into a plot that has the same conclusion. Yes, the conclusion looks different for each of us, but once past the actual doing, amounts to the same.
As a writer, it's of some consolation to me, whose poetry has been called "dark" by some. I wasn't even aware of it when writing, and humor IS in my work, too, but it seems some readers are surprised by the reminder. Buddhists, I think, would take it in stride, because acknowledging and accepting is the way.
As for this book, it is framed in the story of Danticat's own mother's death. She moves from literature to her mother, literature to her mother, occasionally pausing for other big death events like the earthquakes in Japan and Haiti (as well as 9/11).
All in all, not depressing at all. We are comrades in arms, after all, enjoying our brief, shining moments and our shared destinies. As we should.
July 9, 2017
It’s a monumental thing to lose your mother. Having that shared experience with Edwidge Danticat, this became an instant must read. Sure, the idea of a book, however brief, dedicated solely to the idea of death is not for everyone. But Danticat manages to keep the content elevated above the threat of dreariness through philosophical pondering, artistic analysis and personal accounts of her mother’s life and eventual passing.
.
For much of The Art of Death, Danticat dons a professorial like cap, as she deconstructs passages from famed and obscure novels where different types of death are addressed. The subject of death is uncomfortable for most of us. Here, we’re able to study this weighty occurrence mostly through the lens of various authors, from a personal and creative perspective.
As a writer, it’s said that the more you read, the more your craft will improve. At the bare minimum, this book exemplifies just how voracious of a reader Danticat is. This appetite has definitely paid dividends. Since her debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, she’s gone from a rising talent to a masterful creator of impactful literature, particularly in the past decade. The Art of Death is a unique blend of the cerebral and visceral realms. On the one hand. it will force you to examine death more closely, while simultaneously stimulating the higher reaches of the mind. That being said. the heart of the book is Danticat’s candor regarding her mother’s final days. It will prompt more than a few tears.
.
For much of The Art of Death, Danticat dons a professorial like cap, as she deconstructs passages from famed and obscure novels where different types of death are addressed. The subject of death is uncomfortable for most of us. Here, we’re able to study this weighty occurrence mostly through the lens of various authors, from a personal and creative perspective.
As a writer, it’s said that the more you read, the more your craft will improve. At the bare minimum, this book exemplifies just how voracious of a reader Danticat is. This appetite has definitely paid dividends. Since her debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, she’s gone from a rising talent to a masterful creator of impactful literature, particularly in the past decade. The Art of Death is a unique blend of the cerebral and visceral realms. On the one hand. it will force you to examine death more closely, while simultaneously stimulating the higher reaches of the mind. That being said. the heart of the book is Danticat’s candor regarding her mother’s final days. It will prompt more than a few tears.
October 25, 2017
4.25/5 on aesthetic narrative structural merits
5/5 - on heart. what threads these disparate chapters together, written often for varying news and magazine outlets, is that Danticat processes her mother's death of ovarian cancer. The continuity is not linear, but it's there. Danticat shares her grief and her fears, her dreams and even her mother's dreams, from diagnosis and initial chemotherapy and holistic medicine treatments until her mother's decline in hospice. She shares even the hours of her mother's last breath, her body transfer to a morgue, the year that follows. This endeared me most to The Art of Death . Thank you, Ms. Danticat. I'm grateful for your witness and testimony
5/5 - on heart. what threads these disparate chapters together, written often for varying news and magazine outlets, is that Danticat processes her mother's death of ovarian cancer. The continuity is not linear, but it's there. Danticat shares her grief and her fears, her dreams and even her mother's dreams, from diagnosis and initial chemotherapy and holistic medicine treatments until her mother's decline in hospice. She shares even the hours of her mother's last breath, her body transfer to a morgue, the year that follows. This endeared me most to The Art of Death . Thank you, Ms. Danticat. I'm grateful for your witness and testimony
April 20, 2018
“It is, I learned over the course of my mother’s gradual decline, impossible to watch someone you love die and not feel the encroaching brush of death upon yourself. It’s as if death had entered the room, paused, then moved past you before laying its hands on your loved one.”
Edwidge Danticat was apart from her mother for eight years of her childhood. I cannot imagine that. I cannot separate my mother from my childhood. If there is a line between the two, I don’t understand that line. For many of us, the death of our mother is one of life’s most profound experiences. And it’s an experience that never really ends. So I appreciated this examination of death, and death in literature, as seen from the eyes of someone coming to terms with that momentous event.
This book has a trajectory--it goes from the outside in. At first I was a little disappointed. Lots of references to other people’s writing about death. Much good stuff there: Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Albert Camus, Tolstoy--but I wanted to know her story. She mentions the circularity of her telling, and she spirals in slowly, closer and more personal. I found the last part so poignant and meaningful.
An informative and touching exploration.
Edwidge Danticat was apart from her mother for eight years of her childhood. I cannot imagine that. I cannot separate my mother from my childhood. If there is a line between the two, I don’t understand that line. For many of us, the death of our mother is one of life’s most profound experiences. And it’s an experience that never really ends. So I appreciated this examination of death, and death in literature, as seen from the eyes of someone coming to terms with that momentous event.
This book has a trajectory--it goes from the outside in. At first I was a little disappointed. Lots of references to other people’s writing about death. Much good stuff there: Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Albert Camus, Tolstoy--but I wanted to know her story. She mentions the circularity of her telling, and she spirals in slowly, closer and more personal. I found the last part so poignant and meaningful.
An informative and touching exploration.
January 19, 2018
A surprisingly effective combination, this is both a memoir of the author's mother's death from cancer and an examination of the way different authors whose work she likes have depicted death. Considering the portrayal of death as art allows Danticat to explore this essential subject – its dread, allure, power, and the potent force its inevitability exerts on every other aspect of human life – from a variety of angles and with useful artistic distance. This intellectually valuable coolness is balanced and the book gains warmth and depth by the love and vulnerability illustrated in the sections about Danticat's time caring for her mother during her illness and dying. Thought provoking, powerful, and lovely. 4 1/2 stars, rounded up.
April 14, 2019
Very moving book on--as said in the title--death. Only some of it pertains to actually how to write about it, although in some sense, of course, the writing of the book itself describes that.
The book did make me cry. Repeatedly. And painfully aware of my own mortality. That's says a lot for the power of Danticat's writing. And there are some solid suggestions for how write "the Final Story".
Not a "how-to" book but a strong one.
The book did make me cry. Repeatedly. And painfully aware of my own mortality. That's says a lot for the power of Danticat's writing. And there are some solid suggestions for how write "the Final Story".
Not a "how-to" book but a strong one.
July 16, 2017
This is my 8th Dandicot book and won't be my last. She is an amazing thinker and I enjoyed this all-to-brief glimpse into her mind. I'm still giggling about the "momoir" genre she mentioned. The bibliography of referenced works illustrates her vast and varied influences, and this book demonstrates her ability to synthesize and draw meaning from these disparate sources. Finding different puzzle pieces through intertexuality and assembling them into a meaningful picture seems to be common denominator in many of our most brilliant writers. I wish I had a mere fraction of her talent.
August 3, 2017
I felt like a grad school professor reading my student's thesis or dissertation on the art of death. There are five pages of works cited. I give it an A+. As far as pleasure reading goes, though, I'd give it a 'C'.
November 15, 2023
I was looking for memoir that was dealing with the processus of grieving for my master thesis and I must say that was one of the best choice.
Danticat explores death and grief in such unique way, from all angles that you can only relate to it. It’s a very moving book that makes you aware of what death can be. Death is a multitude of things, it isn’t just the end of life.
Anyway, yes I cried. Many times.
Danticat explores death and grief in such unique way, from all angles that you can only relate to it. It’s a very moving book that makes you aware of what death can be. Death is a multitude of things, it isn’t just the end of life.
Anyway, yes I cried. Many times.
November 20, 2020
I checked this book out of the library, having been disappointed by Danticat's short story collection Everything inside and thinking I had to give this very important, clearly talented writer another chance, in another genre - but not quite willing to spend money again. After about 25 pages, I returned the library book and bought my own copy so I could highlight, write in margins, take notes inside the front cover, and in all ways have a conversation with this very engaging thinker.
She is well-read, thoroughly observant, and well-traveled through life, thus has much to teach about what is probably life's central mystery. Danticat examines death from every angle, partly for the sake of writers who need to lead their characters and their plots through the scenes, the feelings, the five senses' involvement, in every kind of death. Even more, she digs deeply into grief and loss for every one of us who has experienced the death of a loved one. I found myself poring over sentences and paragraphs like I was studying for an exam, and I realized that in fact I am. I'm in my early 60's and have suffered some hard grief, as my parents' generation ages and dies and people my age begin to fall victim to disease or accidents.
Death edges closer and closer, and Danticat's book made it clear to me that I do not fear my own. I fear losing the people I love, and I know the older I get the more inevitable it becomes that I will lose the people closer to me. She quotes C.S. Lewis saying that no one told him that grief was like fear. Somehow, it's reassuring to know that people as wise and sensitive as Danticat have been down this road ahead of me, that they're there to lead the way when, as unavoidably I must, I get to that point of losing the people who are most important to me.
I didn't know this was an exam I needed to study for, but she is a wonderful guide to the subject and she led me to others: I stopped and read Toni Morrison's Sula after an unforgettable scene in this book, and then Song of Solomon (and knew I needed to read every word Toni Morrison ever wrote.) Danticat shows us the way through the forests we all must pass through, gently but firmly. Count me a grateful fan.
She is well-read, thoroughly observant, and well-traveled through life, thus has much to teach about what is probably life's central mystery. Danticat examines death from every angle, partly for the sake of writers who need to lead their characters and their plots through the scenes, the feelings, the five senses' involvement, in every kind of death. Even more, she digs deeply into grief and loss for every one of us who has experienced the death of a loved one. I found myself poring over sentences and paragraphs like I was studying for an exam, and I realized that in fact I am. I'm in my early 60's and have suffered some hard grief, as my parents' generation ages and dies and people my age begin to fall victim to disease or accidents.
Death edges closer and closer, and Danticat's book made it clear to me that I do not fear my own. I fear losing the people I love, and I know the older I get the more inevitable it becomes that I will lose the people closer to me. She quotes C.S. Lewis saying that no one told him that grief was like fear. Somehow, it's reassuring to know that people as wise and sensitive as Danticat have been down this road ahead of me, that they're there to lead the way when, as unavoidably I must, I get to that point of losing the people who are most important to me.
I didn't know this was an exam I needed to study for, but she is a wonderful guide to the subject and she led me to others: I stopped and read Toni Morrison's Sula after an unforgettable scene in this book, and then Song of Solomon (and knew I needed to read every word Toni Morrison ever wrote.) Danticat shows us the way through the forests we all must pass through, gently but firmly. Count me a grateful fan.
September 5, 2017
This book is part of “The Art of” series for writers. Danticat explores how death has been written about in fiction and non-fiction, using many examples from classic and contemporary literature. She shares her experience of her mother’s death to explore culture, ritual, and expectations surrounding death. I find it fascinating that death scenes from literature are referred to as well as accounts from memoirs of facing one’s own or a loved one’s death. This is certainly not a clinical, dry account of how to write about death. It’s not, directly, a craft book. It’s as much a critical and philosophical exploration as it is personal. Danticat ably manages the balance between writing details from her mother’s illness and death, yet weaving them into larger themes of how writers explore “the final story.”
Danticat’s writing here is as thoughtful and evocative as it is in her novels. In her introduction, she states: “Writing has been the primary way I have tried to make sense of my losses, including deaths.” This statement resonated. As a writer whose work is populated with themes of death and subsequent grief, as a bereaved daughter, and as an avid reader, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Danticat’s writing here is as thoughtful and evocative as it is in her novels. In her introduction, she states: “Writing has been the primary way I have tried to make sense of my losses, including deaths.” This statement resonated. As a writer whose work is populated with themes of death and subsequent grief, as a bereaved daughter, and as an avid reader, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
July 9, 2023
While Danticat’s meditations on death are more accessible than an academic’s, and each chapter reflected a different aspect of death, I struggled to remain interested or found her reflections particularly insightful. The main value of the book for me was the collection of quotes by different authors:
Great misfortunes are monotonous. So how do we write about them without sounding overindulgent, self righteous, self piteous, melodramatic, sentimental, or a combination of some or all of the above?
Earthquakes: we take for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and stationary. We even talk about people being “down to earth” or having both feet planted firmly on the floor. But suddenly one day we see that it isn’t true. The earth, the boulders, that are supposed to be so solid, all of a sudden turn as mushy as liquid.
We also write of our most painful experiences hoping that bringing those horrors to light might serve some greater purpose. Our most humble, and most arrogant wish is that perhaps our writing might help others feel less alone.
While there is life in man, he can perfect himself and serve the universe.
[Suicide’s note]
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
[…] And there is no way at of us could have gotten between her and that kiss. Some of her friends wished they’d been on the beach with her that day. They believed the could have stopped her. But we couldn’t be with her every second of every day, standing between her and the lure of that final kiss. She’d always be distant, far away, beyond our reach.
I despise your books. I despise all wisdom and blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immoral geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.
You are all far more than others say of you, for the spark of the infinite glows within each of you.
How could these otherwise exceptional events not pale in comparison? Death always wants to hog the stage. It cannot help itself. But it does not get to hog every stage. While we are still alive, we get to write the story.
On the day that we are born, our mother’s face is the face that reflects all things. Mama died at sundown and changed a world. That is, the world which had been built out of her body and her heart.
Great misfortunes are monotonous. So how do we write about them without sounding overindulgent, self righteous, self piteous, melodramatic, sentimental, or a combination of some or all of the above?
Earthquakes: we take for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and stationary. We even talk about people being “down to earth” or having both feet planted firmly on the floor. But suddenly one day we see that it isn’t true. The earth, the boulders, that are supposed to be so solid, all of a sudden turn as mushy as liquid.
We also write of our most painful experiences hoping that bringing those horrors to light might serve some greater purpose. Our most humble, and most arrogant wish is that perhaps our writing might help others feel less alone.
While there is life in man, he can perfect himself and serve the universe.
[Suicide’s note]
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
[…] And there is no way at of us could have gotten between her and that kiss. Some of her friends wished they’d been on the beach with her that day. They believed the could have stopped her. But we couldn’t be with her every second of every day, standing between her and the lure of that final kiss. She’d always be distant, far away, beyond our reach.
I despise your books. I despise all wisdom and blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immoral geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.
You are all far more than others say of you, for the spark of the infinite glows within each of you.
How could these otherwise exceptional events not pale in comparison? Death always wants to hog the stage. It cannot help itself. But it does not get to hog every stage. While we are still alive, we get to write the story.
On the day that we are born, our mother’s face is the face that reflects all things. Mama died at sundown and changed a world. That is, the world which had been built out of her body and her heart.
July 13, 2017
I read this book in one day, in one sitting (punctuated by the living tasks of eating and such), feeling less like I was reading a memoir (or a piece of literary criticism) and more like I was sitting across the table from Danticat, listening to her discuss her death with the sort of casual-but-seriousness that one adopts during a particularly lively discussion following dinner (and I wound up adding quite a lot of books that depict death to my Amazon shopping cart). I'm the kind of person for whom the books I read constantly reflect and refract the content of my life, so I found Danticat's fluid blend of narrative and literary analysis eminently readable and engaging, although I could certainly see how the casual consumer of prose might find it less than satisfying. The subtitle to The Art of Death is "Writing the Final Story" and I can image that bit was added by the editor so that it could better fit the Charles Baxter series on craft that it joins, because if Danticat's narrative and analysis make anything about writing about death clear, it is that death is hardly ever the final story, the final plot point, the finale. Instead, as Danticat and the other works of fiction she investigates maintain, death is hardly ever the end. Narratives move outwards, backwards from death; in toward it; we circle it; it happens offhand, offstage or language explores it laboriously. In this way, our attempts to grapple with death (as a concept and as a reality) mirror the ways that narrative treats it as well. Having never died, we cannot fully represent death on the page, so it becomes that great absent signified toward which our language only ever gestures, however incompletely. Readers and the living have this in common as well, our shared goal of trying constantly to make meaning out of that strange absence.
September 7, 2017
I read The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story while I was working on my own essay about maternal death. This was somewhat serendipitously as I wasn’t in the SoHo bookstore searching for inspiration. I was only killing time. Using the air conditioned space, lingering as I was waiting for my dinner plans to text me.
Only an hour earlier, I had finished a therapy appointment, leaving me scattered and narcissistic. So obsessed with my own deficiencies, I lacked energy to connect to the tomes surrounding me. A bookshop, ordinarily a technicolor experience, was dull and distant.
Thirty minutes later, that twinge of excitement reminding me that I’m still bibliophilic and alive. Attracted to the morose to embarrassing levels, I lit up when I saw the title: The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story. The book’s appeal is directly linked to my longing for more honest, long-form dialogue about death. Needless to say, I left the bookshop with a new companion that day.
Like me, Danticat recently lost her mother to a fast-moving cancer, a trauma she memoirs throughout the short, but punchy, volume. She explains that writing and reading about death have given her the personal insights that has helped her take a swing at grasping mortality. She’s been writing about death for as long as she’s been writing, taking great inspiration from other writers attempts at the subject. The Art of Death isn’t a declaration of the right way to write about death. The thesis is more that, for writers and readers, the subject can be so much more than a plot point. Danticat encourages writers to engage with the bigger conversation when death is in their narrative(s), fictional or autobiographical.
The Art of Death is broken into 8 subjects, each with their own chapter:
Her explanations on how to write death are far from technical. She uses emotional understanding as her ruler as she passionately deconstructs prose and plot that tackles the subject. As a writer, her examples really helped clarify how to be succinct and careful when describing the morbidities of my internal world. As a reader, these examples were extremely valuable as they provided understanding and connection on the isolating subject, even if my TBR shelf is creaking with the additional weight of her recommendations.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in contemplating death or anyone who has a connection to death and is looking for solace. It’s a writing advice book, and the writing advice is very valuable, but it is also Danticat’s personal memoir or an ode to her belated mother.
Five decomposing hearts.
Only an hour earlier, I had finished a therapy appointment, leaving me scattered and narcissistic. So obsessed with my own deficiencies, I lacked energy to connect to the tomes surrounding me. A bookshop, ordinarily a technicolor experience, was dull and distant.
Thirty minutes later, that twinge of excitement reminding me that I’m still bibliophilic and alive. Attracted to the morose to embarrassing levels, I lit up when I saw the title: The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story. The book’s appeal is directly linked to my longing for more honest, long-form dialogue about death. Needless to say, I left the bookshop with a new companion that day.
Like me, Danticat recently lost her mother to a fast-moving cancer, a trauma she memoirs throughout the short, but punchy, volume. She explains that writing and reading about death have given her the personal insights that has helped her take a swing at grasping mortality. She’s been writing about death for as long as she’s been writing, taking great inspiration from other writers attempts at the subject. The Art of Death isn’t a declaration of the right way to write about death. The thesis is more that, for writers and readers, the subject can be so much more than a plot point. Danticat encourages writers to engage with the bigger conversation when death is in their narrative(s), fictional or autobiographical.
The Art of Death is broken into 8 subjects, each with their own chapter:
Living Dyingly
Ars Moriendi
Dying Together
Wanting to Die
Condemned to Die
Close Calls
Circles and Circles of Sorrow
Feetfirst
Her explanations on how to write death are far from technical. She uses emotional understanding as her ruler as she passionately deconstructs prose and plot that tackles the subject. As a writer, her examples really helped clarify how to be succinct and careful when describing the morbidities of my internal world. As a reader, these examples were extremely valuable as they provided understanding and connection on the isolating subject, even if my TBR shelf is creaking with the additional weight of her recommendations.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in contemplating death or anyone who has a connection to death and is looking for solace. It’s a writing advice book, and the writing advice is very valuable, but it is also Danticat’s personal memoir or an ode to her belated mother.
Five decomposing hearts.
March 5, 2018
Danticat is brilliant and takes us on a tour of literary death that is nonpareil, examining death, suicide, and near-death with a lens both personal and extremely literary (heavy on Morrison and Hurston, and justufiably so). She tells us what great art does to bring death near and to keep it at bay, and her insight is some of the best craft advice I could have gotten writing a book whose protagonist lost her mom and is losing her dad.
But it is the final chapters of this book in which she begins to _show_ us the art of death by writing the deaths of her parents in prayer, story, poem, and ritual. I wept openly as the book moved from theory and analysis into mastery of the form—not because it was artful, though it was, but because it did what all great writing about death does. It brought me closer to my deaths: both the losses I’ve survived and my own future expiration date.
But it is the final chapters of this book in which she begins to _show_ us the art of death by writing the deaths of her parents in prayer, story, poem, and ritual. I wept openly as the book moved from theory and analysis into mastery of the form—not because it was artful, though it was, but because it did what all great writing about death does. It brought me closer to my deaths: both the losses I’ve survived and my own future expiration date.
November 16, 2017
One of my favorite books I’ve read this year, part memoir, part literary criticism, all heart and mind and soul. Danticat examines the ways we think and write and feel about death in light of her mother’s death.
July 2, 2019
Wise advice from the immensely talented Edwidge Danticat on how she and other fiction/nonfiction writers have approached writing about the final journey. I'm looking forward to discussing this in my Illness Narratives class this fall.
August 13, 2017
Beautiful
February 19, 2018
4/5: While not my favorite Danticat book (perhaps because she was restricted by the nature of Greywolf's "The Art of" Series), The Art of Death made some excellent correlations about death, and about several authors' writing about the same. The last chapter, "Circles and Circles of Sorrow," is easily my favorite and not an easy read, where Danticat relates the story of her mother's death. I ended up dog-earing nine pages for later reference. It would be a good book for someone who is writing about death, and who needs to see how others have already written about the subject well.
May 24, 2018
i want to read all of her other books and all the books she mentions that i haven't read
July 17, 2023
The first craft book I’ve ever read that made me openly weep.
May 12, 2020
Part memoir, part analysis of death in literature. I preferred the memoir parts.
March 13, 2024
This book reads like a theoretical paper. Danticat sites many well know authors and the ways they handle the subject in their writings. Very interesting and thought provoking. Not a smooth read but a tough one. The best part is when she writes about her mother’s death and what led up to and after it. Wonderfully written.
November 4, 2018
Danticat explores death, how people die, their experiences between life and death, the “dying livingly,” leading up to her experience as her mother dies. Beautifully written with references to Michael Ondaatje, Toni Morrison, the Bible, and other books and writings that reference death. How does one die? In pain, surrounded by family, alone, scared, relieved?)
September 18, 2018
If you are interested in death, or writing, or writing about death, this book is for you. I bought it not knowing that it was geared towards writing but it was very interesting and helpful during the grieving process. Made me want to read the author's fiction books and tons of the books she references throughout this book.
August 31, 2022
In some ways more of a composite of all the reading Danticat has done on death during and since her mother's passing. But it is about the acceptance of mortality, and love that endures.
November 27, 2018
I'm not sure how to review this. I disagree with so much of it, particularly its focus on the death of others (bereavement, grief) about which much literature already exists (some of which this provides a lit crit of); nowhere, even on the chapter devoted to suicide, is there anything about one's own death. As in writing one's own death as an author. But then one can't really criticise a book for what it is not.
I give it 4 stars because it has stimulated a lot of thought for me, possibly even a future novel (having spent the last 18 months trying to write my own death in fiction). But where I take issue with it is in its quotes of the writings and sayings of others such as Toni Morrison, Albert Camus, Don Delillo, William Faulkner, Susan Sontag, Tolstoy, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Murakami's non-fiction, (I was surprised by how many of her sources I have also read) - it's because I found myself disagreeing with so many of these that I do feel I can contest with her book even though it is making a different study than the one I want it to make.
Toni Morrison - We die - That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the meaning of our lives".
Don Delillo - "There's a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...)
Well bully for writers like Morrison & DeLillo - this implies people who don't have the language they as writers possess are the only ones who can access the meaning of life. And as for Morrison, if death is the meaning of life, we are all dunces, because most people keep death very remote from their daily lives, which is why they are always surprised when they are exposed to it.
Joan Didion (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7... ) - "Death always wants to hog the stage. It cannot help itself. After all, Death cannot write its own story. While we are still alive, we are the ones who get to write the story".
Chitra Divakaruni (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... ) - "Everyone has a story... stories in order to live" No, the point is when we die, the story ends (even if a couple of generations of our loved ones keep those stories in circulation, eventually there's no one left to do that). And again, lucky authors whose stories may well live long in the pool of human knowledge in the form of their books. But where is the meditation on the fact that when we die we lose our tongues, our language, our stories - stories past of memory and unwritten and unenacted stories of a future that no longer exists? This is what I believe Danticat omits to study and while admittedly few writers have attempted to write their own deaths, I would offer William Gaddis, David Markson (and Markson himself offered Virginia Woolf & Henry James).
This is the great dearth in literature. It is not just about the ones left behind. It is not just about those departed wholly refracted through the eyes of those left behind. It is about the death of the "I". And this book never gets to grips with that at all.
I give it 4 stars because it has stimulated a lot of thought for me, possibly even a future novel (having spent the last 18 months trying to write my own death in fiction). But where I take issue with it is in its quotes of the writings and sayings of others such as Toni Morrison, Albert Camus, Don Delillo, William Faulkner, Susan Sontag, Tolstoy, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Murakami's non-fiction, (I was surprised by how many of her sources I have also read) - it's because I found myself disagreeing with so many of these that I do feel I can contest with her book even though it is making a different study than the one I want it to make.
Toni Morrison - We die - That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the meaning of our lives".
Don Delillo - "There's a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...)
Well bully for writers like Morrison & DeLillo - this implies people who don't have the language they as writers possess are the only ones who can access the meaning of life. And as for Morrison, if death is the meaning of life, we are all dunces, because most people keep death very remote from their daily lives, which is why they are always surprised when they are exposed to it.
Joan Didion (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7... ) - "Death always wants to hog the stage. It cannot help itself. After all, Death cannot write its own story. While we are still alive, we are the ones who get to write the story".
Chitra Divakaruni (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... ) - "Everyone has a story... stories in order to live" No, the point is when we die, the story ends (even if a couple of generations of our loved ones keep those stories in circulation, eventually there's no one left to do that). And again, lucky authors whose stories may well live long in the pool of human knowledge in the form of their books. But where is the meditation on the fact that when we die we lose our tongues, our language, our stories - stories past of memory and unwritten and unenacted stories of a future that no longer exists? This is what I believe Danticat omits to study and while admittedly few writers have attempted to write their own deaths, I would offer William Gaddis, David Markson (and Markson himself offered Virginia Woolf & Henry James).
This is the great dearth in literature. It is not just about the ones left behind. It is not just about those departed wholly refracted through the eyes of those left behind. It is about the death of the "I". And this book never gets to grips with that at all.
October 6, 2017
I had the recent privilege of listening to the author speak at UNC. In this book, she magically weaves her processing of her mother’s death with death in literature and other writing. It is lyrical, reflective & Dad & ultimately provides a good perspective on the gift of life, even with all its anguish & loss.
July 21, 2023
CB15 Bingo: Relation"ship" -- beautiful, literary nerdy work on the relationship between the author and her mother
This is a gorgeous, heart breaking book that serves as a nice little primer for a number of Serious Literary Works that maybe you haven't gotten around to reading (I'll raise my hand, I know there are others of you out there). In that sense, it's less a meditative memoir-esque novel. It almost reads like Danticat is trying to make sense of what is happening to her mother in the best way she knows how--by escaping to literature and the words of great authors who have described the same.
I understand very acutely what Danticat is doing, I suppose, because when things are difficult I, too, retreat into my hideaway: that of facts, and science, and published research, and I offer up my attempts at salving my pain to others who might not get it. Reviews that talk about the literary analysis as being distracting make me smile, because if you don't process this way then it wouldn't make sense to you at all, of course.
As with all good literary works, this book has renewed my determination to read some of these great works of literature and see for myself what Danticat is explaining. This is part of an anthology of sorts--"Art of..."--but I can't say that I'm very keen on continuing onto the other entries. As a standalone, gleaned from an author interview in the NYT that was full of books I'd never even heard of, it works perfectly.
This is a gorgeous, heart breaking book that serves as a nice little primer for a number of Serious Literary Works that maybe you haven't gotten around to reading (I'll raise my hand, I know there are others of you out there). In that sense, it's less a meditative memoir-esque novel. It almost reads like Danticat is trying to make sense of what is happening to her mother in the best way she knows how--by escaping to literature and the words of great authors who have described the same.
I understand very acutely what Danticat is doing, I suppose, because when things are difficult I, too, retreat into my hideaway: that of facts, and science, and published research, and I offer up my attempts at salving my pain to others who might not get it. Reviews that talk about the literary analysis as being distracting make me smile, because if you don't process this way then it wouldn't make sense to you at all, of course.
As with all good literary works, this book has renewed my determination to read some of these great works of literature and see for myself what Danticat is explaining. This is part of an anthology of sorts--"Art of..."--but I can't say that I'm very keen on continuing onto the other entries. As a standalone, gleaned from an author interview in the NYT that was full of books I'd never even heard of, it works perfectly.
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