A Widow's Story: A Memoir

Unlike anything Joyce Carol Oates has written before, A Widow’s Story is the universally acclaimed author’s poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of Raymond Smith, her husband of forty-six years, and its wrenching, surprising aftermath. A recent recipient of National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, Oates, whose novels (Blonde, The Gravedigger’s Daughter, Little Bird of Heaven, etc.) rank among the very finest in contemporary American fiction, offers an achingly personal story of love and loss. A Widow’s Story is a literary memoir on a par with The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and Calvin Trillin’s About Alice.

In a work unlike anything she's written before, National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates unveils a poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of her husband of forty-six years and its wrenching, surprising aftermath.

"My husband died, my life collapsed."

On a February morning in 2008, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the emergency room of the Princeton Medical Center where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Both Joyce and Ray expected him to be released in a day or two. But in less than a week, even as Joyce was preparing for his discharge, Ray died from a virulent hospital-acquired infection, and Joyce was suddenly faced—totally unprepared—with the stunning reality of widowhood.

A Widow's Story illuminates one woman's struggle to comprehend a life without the partnership that had sustained and defined her for nearly half a century. As never before, Joyce Carol Oates shares the derangement of denial, the anguish of loss, the disorientation of the survivor amid a nightmare of "death-duties," and the solace of friendship. She writes unflinchingly of the experience of grief—the almost unbearable suspense of the hospital vigil, the treacherous "pools" of memory that surround us, the vocabulary of illness, the absurdities of commercialized forms of mourning. Here is a frank acknowledgment of the widow's desperation—only gradually yielding to the recognition that "this is my life now."

Enlivened by the piercing vision, acute perception, and mordant humor that are the hallmarks of the work of Joyce Carol Oates, this moving tale of life and death, love and grief, offers a candid, never-before-glimpsed view of the acclaimed author and fiercely private woman.

“A harrowing tale…” - Detroit News

“Oates excellently conveys the disconnect between the inwardly chaotic self and the outwardly functioning person…” - New York Review of Books

“Galvanizing...[Oates] recounts this horrific “siege” of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity. . . . Protean and unflinching Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound “pilgrimage” from chaos to coherence. . . . The incomparable, best-selling Oates fascinates readers, and her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking .” - Booklist (starred review)

“Widowhood for Oates is a rough, disfiguring condition, one that mocks past happiness. Words are her salvation. “A Widow’s Story” is a brave book that carries its author through the contortions of doubt and despair, on a pilgrimage back to life.” - Charleston Post & Courier

“Packed with moments of…frankness…” - Seattle Weekly

“In a lesser writer’s hands, the 88 short, disjointed chapters that form A Widow’s Story might congeal into a confused mess. Oates, however, is fully in control - as a writer, heightened emotion is the essential ingredient in her work…As A Widow’s Story progresses, it becomes [Raymond Smith’s] story - both an homage to a decent, intensely private man, and Oates’ way of keeping him in memory as she probes his most closely guarded self…” - Seattle Times

“As a writer, heightened emotion is the essential ingredient in [Oates’] work…As A Widow’s Story progresses, it becomes [Raymond Smith’s] story--both an homage to a decent, intensely private man, and Oates’ way of keeping him in memory as she probes his most closely guarded self.” - Seattle Times

“This is a brave, haunting, heart-rending book, and it will never let you go.” - Providence Journal

“A vivid and urgent memoir…” - Dallas Morning News

“Affecting…perfectly pitched prose…” - Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Joyce Carol Oates writes like a force of nature, and a story emerges, as if organically, from the physicality of her grief. There are few secrets and no lies, only insights into the inner world of her partner of 50 years.” - Financial Times

“A Widow’s Story is unlike anything Oates has written before…a poignant and raw examination of the obsessiveness and self-indulgence of grief…” - Denver Post

“A brave, dark but slyly mordant memoir…Oates rages at the dying of the light of her life in this unflinching, generous portrait of the terror of emptiness.” - National Public Radio

“[An] intense, raw memoir…[that] gives its readers intimate access to the most abject moments of sorrow, even as it explores the boundary between private and public selves…There is a breathless, antic quality to Oates’ prose here, an abundance of exclamation marks, dashes and repetitive phrases, stylistic markers that mirror the shock of unanticipated loss and its debilitating physical and psychological repercussions. This gives the memoir a kind of lightness and manic energy that make it a (paradoxically) pleasurable reading experience, and readers will come away grateful for having been granted such an intimate glimpse of a long and happy marriage.” - BookPage

“Joyce Carol Oates’s new memoir, A Widow’s Story, is a naked confession about the messy relation of art to life…A Widow’s Story, while about life after the death of a husband, is also about the intense inner life of a female genius…” - Elle

“As much a portrait of a unique marriage as a chronicle of grief...immensely moving…“ - People

“A rumination on widowhood, and the struggle to reclaim identity in the aftermath of profound loss…A Widow’s Story seems just right - neither overly sentimental nor detached…Whether detailing “the lengthy drumroll of death-duties” or, in her darkest moments, describing herself edging toward madness, Oates proves an utterly compelling protagonist. Her prose is gorgeous and precise.” - San Francisco Chronicle

“Reads like a rending of garments…” - Cleveland Plain Dealer

“…As enthralling as it is painful…a searing account…It is characteristic of Oates’s superb balancing of the intellectual and the emotional that she enables a reader to experience Smith’s death in the dramatic way she herself did.” - Washington Post

“An affecting portrait of anguish.” - The Economist

“Oates’ raw emotion lifts the veil of the enormity of grief that most widows, and widowers, must feel at the loss of their partners in a way that will come as a shock to some and a relief to others.” - Minneapolis Star Tribune

“…Astonishingly candid…[Oates’s] suffering gushes forth in page after page of detailed prose, snatches of sentences, reportorial and intuitive, emotional and reflective…Oates set out to write a widow’s handbook. What she has accomplished is a story of a marriage.” - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Oates writes movingly about the terror, depression and suicidal ruminations that dominated her existence in the months after Smith’s death…it’s impossible to be unmoved by Oates’ “Story,” by the degree to which she sees her husband everywhere she looks, as she finds beauty in the elusive notion of renewal.” - Kansas City Star

“[Oates] shines a bright light in every corner in her soul-searing memoir of widowhood.” - Publishers Weekly

“The novelist and essayist pens her most intimate book about the death of her husband of 46 years. Judging by the excerpt in The New Yorker Oates’ memoir will join Antonia Fraser and Joan Didion on the shelf of essential works on loss.” - Daily Beast

“Astonishing…revelatory…[A Widow’s Story] is remarkable…for how candidly Oates explores the writer’s secret life: the private world of her marriage, which…she asserts is far truer and more real, and of far greater importance, than any of her imaginary creations.” - Book Forum

“Flourishes of black humor punctuate the drumbeat of grief, setting the book apart from works such as Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking.” - Wall Street Journal

“In a narrative as searing as the best of her fiction, Oates describes the aftermath of her husband Ray’s unexpected death from pneumonia…It’s the painful, scorchingly angry journey of a woman struggling to live in a house “from which meaning has departed, like air leaking from a balloon.” - Entertainment Weekly

“…A cascade-of-consciousness that will mostly mesmerize you and surely move you…a book more painfully self-revelatory than anything Oates the fiction writer or critic has ever dared to produce.” - New York Times Book Review

“Oates is a fearless writer.” - Los Angeles Times

“America’s most prolific and versatile literary novelist.” - Houston Chronicle

“Oates is such a smart observer of how we live.” - Seattle Times

“This book is beautifully written and very affecting. Oates is honest and forthcoming about her fears, dazed state, and outer mien vs. inner terror. Readers will become emotionally involved then feel relief when Oates is finally able to move on. A worthy purchase that will be appreciated by readers of memoir generally and older readers especially.” - Library Journal

“A wildly unhinged, deeply intimate look at the eminent author’s “derangement of Widowhood.”...Oates writes with gut-wrenching honesty and spares no one in ripping the illusions off the face of death...Oates continues to keep her readers guessing at her next thrilling effort.” - Kirkus Reviews

“Ms. Oates is an American literary institution.” - Richmond Times-Dispatch