New and upcoming books related to grief

The Grief Library is a physical place—a cabinet and a bookcase in my guest bedroom—and they’re full to overflowing. Even so, I continue to add books faster than I can read them. Here are a few new additions to my list. I look forward to sharing reviews with you soon.

• I Would Die If I Were You: Notes on Art and Truth Telling by Emily Rapp Black (out now)
  • I’ve got a book-buying problem. That’s not a secret, and I’m working on it. (It’s also a pretty great problem to have, but we can talk about that some other time.) I preordered this book and, despite picking it up on the date of its May publication, I haven’t read it yet. But I’m eager. Black writes about her disability and her son’s death, as well as making art and the power of stories. It’s Carla Jean cat nip, it’s just that I have acquired an awful lot of cat nip lately.
• Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood by Joseph Osmundson (out now)
  • Scientist Joseph Osmundson wanted to be a parent from childhood, but our complicated world led him to decide against reproduction. Then a lesbian couple asked him to serve both as their sperm donor and co-parent. It seemed like Osmundson’s parenting dreams were coming true, after all. Until it didn’t. “Spawning Season” explores the grief of not being a parent—and, from the sounds of it, so much more.
• We’re So Lucky to Live Here by Rachel Pastan (out Sept. 15)
  • After her mother’s death, Gwen returns to her childhood home. Both she and her mother were raised there, but holding on to the large house with a turret may be beyond her means. But she’s sure going to try. When her attempts ruffle neighbors’ feathers, Gwen directs a production of “The Cherry Orchard” in the house. It’s an effort to create goodwill with her neighbors, and it’s also a parallel to her own housing struggles. I have a feeling I’ll be diving into Chekhov after I read this novel about grief, housing and community. Thanks to The Grief Library subscriber Amelia Possanza for sending this my way! I bet you didn’t even know my mom’s a retired Realtor and you couldn’t possibly know I grew up drawing floor plans of houses with turrets.
• Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry (out Oct. 6)
  • I was going to skip this month of reviewing for BookPage until one of my editors pitched this memoir. She said she thought of me when she read the first chapter. Her confidence, the title and the synopsis made this an easy yes for me. Novelist Sarah Perry spots her father-in-law from a distance and thinks to herself, he’s dying. Within months, he’s gone. Perry blends science and literary influences as she recounts the final days of her father-in-law’s life.
• The Grief Artist by Traci Brimhall (out Oct. 13)
  • Here’s another subscriber recommendation! Charlotte Donlon (author of the forthcoming “Spiritual Direction for Writers“!) sent me this essay collection’s cover reveal, and I ordered it almost immediately. It’s described as “a meditation about grief, death, art and how we live today in contemporary American culture”—an easy sell!—and blurbed by Beth Ann Fennelly and Molly McCully Brown, whose work I’ve loved. Beth Ann’s latest, “The Irish Goodbye,” is also a Grief Library book. I received an advanced copy at last year’s Southern Festival of Books, and someday soon I need to write about how her description of her sister’s death resonated with me.

What’s on your radar right now? And if you’ve got any tips for buckling down and reading when your sense of distraction is at its peak, send them my way! I think part of the answer is to stop over-scheduling myself.

Note: I am a Bookshop.org affiliate, and I’ll receive a small payment if you shop using the links above. I also strongly recommend supporting your local bookstore!