Perdita

Perdita:On Loss

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An intense literary memoir of love and grief

“Our marriage was, from any conventional point of view, wildly implausible; and you, my dear son, are the miraculous product of this beautiful, rather crazy, and all too brief love affair.” When Dylan Riley received the devastating news that his wife, Emanuela, had cancer, he turned to writing to express the anguish and disarray brought by her worsening symptoms and then her passing. Perdita, composed for their teenage son, Eamon, is the result of this attempt to represent loss. It is at once a portrait of youth, a lyrical memoir of a marriage, and a raw and moving account of bereavement.

Riley describes cancer, Perdita’s central antagonist, as a pitiless opponent, draining hope of its power and reducing it to self-delusion. Its course forces a progressive foreshortening of time. Next year might be terrible, but there can be a few good months now; tomorrow will likely be bad, but let’s focus on today.

In this memoir, the disease provokes a broader set of reflections on the openness, contingency, and pain of the human condition, a status defined by the context of mortality, both our own and that of those we love.

Reviews

  • A poignant memoir of the felicitous and infelicitous contingencies that shape the course of a life, Perdita testifies to the irreducible uniqueness of each human being, and the power of writing to ensure the survival of the universe they once were.

    Ryan Ruby, author of The Zero and the One
  • Eloquent and vivid reflections on the work of mourning.

    Lynne Segal, author of Lean on Me: A Politics of Radical Care
  • Excavates the experience of loss in all its terrible solitude and intimacy.

    Benjamin Kunkel, author of Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis