I, Afterlife

By Kristin Prevallet,

Book cover of I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time

Book description

Poetry. Essays. Much admired by her contemporaries for her experiments in poetic form, Kristin Prevallet now turns those gifts to the most vulnerable moments of her own life, and in doing so, has produced a testament that is both disconsolate and powerful. Meditating on her father's unexplained suicide, Prevallet alternates…

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Why read it?

1 author picked I, Afterlife as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In I, Afterlife, Prevallet writes, “The text that is grieving has no thesis: only speculations.”

This short, sturdy book has been something of a roadmap for me when writing about grief. After her father commits suicide, Prevallet is left with many unanswerable questions, so she presents for her reader the questions, big and small, along with her speculations.

The subtitle, Essay in Mourning Time, points toward what I find so compelling about this work. The book is written from the place of grief—the way it shifts our relationship to time and truth and objects—and in the voice of mourning. 

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