bi_n_large's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death
jadorelire's review
4.0
What would it be like to learn your baby lacks an essential enzyme and will be dead in less than three years, slowly losing his motor skills, sight, and other senses and abilities. How do you live with that grief, what does it feel like to mother that child, how do you get through the day? Emily Rapp shares her experience with us in raw and honest language.
rachelmichelson's review
5.0
Fearless, haunting, honest are just some of the words to describe this memoir. Emily and her husband learn that their son. Ronan, has tas-sac an incurable disease. Ronan will not live. This memoir is Emily's attempt to process and remember her beloved son.
bookwormmichelle's review
3.0
This was involving, and very very sad (the author's son is diagnosed with Tay-Sachs, a fatal genetic disease.) It was raw and angry and painful, but I wish it'd been a little more about the baby, the family--the author, in processing her grief, turned to thinking, to reading, to exploring different avenues and it all seems maybe even too much intellectualized at times. I'd read the book about C.S. Lewis's grief--what I wanted to hear was the story of this family. But it was an intense read, and I think it'll make me think hard about what I say when I encounter someone with a deep painful grief like this.
jennyisreading's review
5.0
What a beautiful and sad book this is. It's insightful and powerful and her experience with her dying son is overflowing with lessons for all parents about living in the moment and seeing our children for who they are instead of for the potential they have to be something else.
davidnoob's review
3.0
Read the first chapter, then drop this book.
The rest is, it pains me to say, not as compelling. I didn't hear much about Ronan, or her husband. She wrote lots of purple prose. If I were to sum this book after the first chapter, I'd write: "Life cannot exist without death. Everyone dies. In accepting death, you will learn how to live."
I'm being unnecessarily harsh—I thought it was well-written, but maybe I was looking for something else. I really loved the first chapter: I cried. And, perhaps, this review is tainted because I suffered a huge loss before reading the rest. And then nothing was the same.
The rest is, it pains me to say, not as compelling. I didn't hear much about Ronan, or her husband. She wrote lots of purple prose. If I were to sum this book after the first chapter, I'd write: "Life cannot exist without death. Everyone dies. In accepting death, you will learn how to live."
I'm being unnecessarily harsh—I thought it was well-written, but maybe I was looking for something else. I really loved the first chapter: I cried. And, perhaps, this review is tainted because I suffered a huge loss before reading the rest. And then nothing was the same.
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