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Memorial Days
A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey to peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse
Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.
After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert’s Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.
Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied ways those of other cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia's First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.
A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.
Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.
After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert’s Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.
Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied ways those of other cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia's First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.
A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published February 4, 2025
2019 people are currently reading
42429 people want to read
About the author
Geraldine Brooks
54 books10.3k followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Australian-born Geraldine Brooks is an author and journalist who grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney, and attended Bethlehem College Ashfield and the University of Sydney. She worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald for three years as a feature writer with a special interest in environmental issues.
In 1982 she won the Greg Shackleton Australian News Correspondents scholarship to the journalism master’s program at Columbia University in New York City. Later she worked for The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans.
She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March. Her first novel, Year of Wonders, is an international bestseller, and People of the Book is a New York Times bestseller translated into 20 languages. She is also the author of the nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence.
Brooks married author Tony Horwitz in Tourette-sur-Loup, France, in 1984. They had two sons– Nathaniel and Bizuayehu–and two dogs. They used to divide their time between their homes in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Sydney, Australia.
Australian-born Geraldine Brooks is an author and journalist who grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney, and attended Bethlehem College Ashfield and the University of Sydney. She worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald for three years as a feature writer with a special interest in environmental issues.
In 1982 she won the Greg Shackleton Australian News Correspondents scholarship to the journalism master’s program at Columbia University in New York City. Later she worked for The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans.
She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March. Her first novel, Year of Wonders, is an international bestseller, and People of the Book is a New York Times bestseller translated into 20 languages. She is also the author of the nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence.
Brooks married author Tony Horwitz in Tourette-sur-Loup, France, in 1984. They had two sons– Nathaniel and Bizuayehu–and two dogs. They used to divide their time between their homes in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Sydney, Australia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,570 reviews
February 5, 2025
I did not want to buy this.
It's a memoir, and I've been up to my eye bags in memoirs for my last novel and the current one. And it was about a novelist grieving after her beloved husband suddenly dropped dead—I already had Didion cued up for later this year.
But it was by Geraldine Brooks, one of my favorite novelists, who just has a way of putting story on a page. At once soothing and ecstatic. So I bought it today and I finished it just now and it was just ... it was just so good, guys. It reminded me a bit of how I felt when I finished WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR, a little book that also felt as if it were bigger on the inside than the outside. Highly recommended to those who enjoy her novels, but also to anyone who needs to remember how joy and grief can (and should) coexist.
It's a memoir, and I've been up to my eye bags in memoirs for my last novel and the current one. And it was about a novelist grieving after her beloved husband suddenly dropped dead—I already had Didion cued up for later this year.
But it was by Geraldine Brooks, one of my favorite novelists, who just has a way of putting story on a page. At once soothing and ecstatic. So I bought it today and I finished it just now and it was just ... it was just so good, guys. It reminded me a bit of how I felt when I finished WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR, a little book that also felt as if it were bigger on the inside than the outside. Highly recommended to those who enjoy her novels, but also to anyone who needs to remember how joy and grief can (and should) coexist.
February 18, 2025
This was too beautiful for words, so I won't try.
February 11, 2025
Geraldine Brooks's memoir of her life in the days immediately after the sudden death of her beloved husband, Tony Horwitz, in 2019 -- and, then, three years later on a rugged island off the coast of Tasmania -- is beautiful. Every single page, every single word. It's not merely an unflinching exploration of grief, it's a precise examination of the nitty-gritty, often infuriating work demanded of the souls left behind. Instead of mourning, there are the mundane details of probate and the terrifying details of making sure your children still have health insurance. And yet Brooks never loses her sense of humor or remarkable ability to convey a landscape or bring people you'll never meet to life. Brooks is one of our literary treasures and Horwitz was one of our literary treasures. Read this book. Then read one of Tony's. Or, better still, take a month or two and read every single book this remarkable couple has gifted us.
April 11, 2025
“Write the truest thing you know. Dear reader, this is it.”
I have been a fan of this author for years. In fact, it was years ago, that our Library Book Discussion Group discussed, “Caleb’s Crossing” which was quite a compelling conversation. I loved her story, “People of the Book,” and was completely taken in by “Horse.” If you are interested in my reviews for any of these books, I have included the links below.
So, when I heard about her memoir, I was in.
What happens when your life partner dies unexpectedly? How does one cope? This is what faced the author. Suddenly, her husband of 35 years, Tony Horwitz, successful author/journalist and Pulitzer Prize Winner for National Reporting (1995), 60-years young, collapsed and died while on his own book tour.
“I stood there and suppressed that howl. Because I was alone, and no one could help me. And if I let go, if I fell, I might not be able to get back up. (Nearly 4 years later…) That howl has become the beast in the basement of my heart. I need to find a way to set it free.”
How many of us have ever wondered what we would do, or how we would be if we ever faced a similar moment? For me, I don’t want to go there. I value present moment living. I don’t want to project myself into an unknown future, that can create anxiety and angst.
But still, what if?
I have to believe for any of us, if faced with something similar, we would need inner strength. Resilience. The ability to cope. And, not some thoughts that would take us to a worst-case scenario.
And, yet, this was the moment in which a phone call created a reality Brooks was unprepared for – and perhaps any of us would be unprepared for, especially if we were miles away from our loved one.
What would happen next?
For this author, she needed to find a way to cope with her grief. Which comes nearly 4 years later, by way of a solo trip to Flinders Island, a remote island off the coast of Tasmania. Her husband died on the American holiday, Memorial Day in 2019, and this will be her opportunity to begin her own memorial days. (Hence the title of the book.)
“…to feel the immensity of his loss.”
And, part of her journey will be going back and forth in time in sharing that horrible phone call alert moment of loss, as well as her loving relationship that encompassed life with Tony. And, all the people touched by his loss.
And, we, her readers will be her calming, soothing partners as we thoughtfully hold her hand through this journey. She may not know we are there, but we do. Because we are in touch with her feelings and her experience and her thoughts, and we are moved. And, heart-broken along with her. We know loss in our own ways. We have experienced losses of partners, or parents, or friends, or important relatives, or pets. And, we know the heartache. So, we are with her. Feeling her words. Her sorrow. Her loneliness. Her love. Her disbelief. Her immense grief. And, need to help hold it together, despite it all.
In some ways, I am reminded of Amy Bloom’s devastatingly beautiful memoir, “In Love” where she helped her husband, Brian Ameche, achieve assisted death. Obviously, the circumstances were different, but the expression of love shared by both women for their husbands, was whole-hearted.
Still, as I kept reading, I couldn’t help but feel her words were personally relatable.
“Who will die first? Because I was older, because I survived cancer…, I did not ask that question. I just assumed it would be me.”
So, many times I will reflect with humor and truthfulness to my husband, who is 5 years younger, that it is a good thing he is younger. Because I honestly would not know what to do without him. I have enjoyed him being my partner, my protector, my caregiver during the cancer journey, my best friend, and my forever love who I appreciate beyond words. So, much of the simple tasks of life, like driving, or grocery shopping, which he prefers to do, and I prefer not to do. So, he does it for both of us. (I am still intimidated by our electric car.) As a senior software specialist during his career, even in retirement, he continues to be tech savvy. Where the simplest problem, has me shrieking out in frustration. And yet, he just comes in, and with a simple key stroke, it is fixed.
At the same time, I want to consider the tasks of shared living with my partner, so that if something were to happen, I would know how to cope in his absence. I know I avoid these thoughts, but I also know it is something I need to consider seriously. If I should suddenly be alone. And, before that should ever happen, if it does.
But I still assume it will be me going first. But what if it isn’t? Even if I am not ready to go there, Brooks had no choice. She was there.
“Instead, I am here. Missing him. Alone.”
How does one live within their sorrow?
For Brooks, it was to learn to return to the “complicated grief” and “relive the trauma of the death.” It may sound maudlin, but there was much to appreciate in the author’s journey of doing so.
Because what we are learning along the way is what she came to appreciate in feeling all her emotions – to “make more time for the beauty.” Notice everything. Experience everything. Feel everything. Celebrate the moment, because it has “the power to elevate us out of sadness.” Where those enveloped in grief can give themselves time and space to be with their feelings. There is no deadline for getting over grief. And, we shouldn’t expect one.
This is a beautifully written, thoughtful, heart-felt and deeply emotional memoir.
For those who want to understand the impacts of grief or are attempting to process their own grief, readers will appreciate her experience and thoughts. Lovers of this author will value her intimate telling of her love story and grief journey.
Lastly…Two things to do before leaving this book.
First, read the author’s Afterword.
Second, take a look at the back cover insert. There is a pensive picture of the author having coffee with her husband. It is a moment in time, with smiles, that appears precious and thoughtful. Reminding all of us to treasure all those moments we may take for granted. Because, we truly have no idea of what tomorrow will bring.
Caleb’s Crossing – Review Here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
People of the Book – Review Here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Horse – Review Here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
In Love by Amy Bloom – Review Here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I have been a fan of this author for years. In fact, it was years ago, that our Library Book Discussion Group discussed, “Caleb’s Crossing” which was quite a compelling conversation. I loved her story, “People of the Book,” and was completely taken in by “Horse.” If you are interested in my reviews for any of these books, I have included the links below.
So, when I heard about her memoir, I was in.
What happens when your life partner dies unexpectedly? How does one cope? This is what faced the author. Suddenly, her husband of 35 years, Tony Horwitz, successful author/journalist and Pulitzer Prize Winner for National Reporting (1995), 60-years young, collapsed and died while on his own book tour.
“I stood there and suppressed that howl. Because I was alone, and no one could help me. And if I let go, if I fell, I might not be able to get back up. (Nearly 4 years later…) That howl has become the beast in the basement of my heart. I need to find a way to set it free.”
How many of us have ever wondered what we would do, or how we would be if we ever faced a similar moment? For me, I don’t want to go there. I value present moment living. I don’t want to project myself into an unknown future, that can create anxiety and angst.
But still, what if?
I have to believe for any of us, if faced with something similar, we would need inner strength. Resilience. The ability to cope. And, not some thoughts that would take us to a worst-case scenario.
And, yet, this was the moment in which a phone call created a reality Brooks was unprepared for – and perhaps any of us would be unprepared for, especially if we were miles away from our loved one.
What would happen next?
For this author, she needed to find a way to cope with her grief. Which comes nearly 4 years later, by way of a solo trip to Flinders Island, a remote island off the coast of Tasmania. Her husband died on the American holiday, Memorial Day in 2019, and this will be her opportunity to begin her own memorial days. (Hence the title of the book.)
“…to feel the immensity of his loss.”
And, part of her journey will be going back and forth in time in sharing that horrible phone call alert moment of loss, as well as her loving relationship that encompassed life with Tony. And, all the people touched by his loss.
And, we, her readers will be her calming, soothing partners as we thoughtfully hold her hand through this journey. She may not know we are there, but we do. Because we are in touch with her feelings and her experience and her thoughts, and we are moved. And, heart-broken along with her. We know loss in our own ways. We have experienced losses of partners, or parents, or friends, or important relatives, or pets. And, we know the heartache. So, we are with her. Feeling her words. Her sorrow. Her loneliness. Her love. Her disbelief. Her immense grief. And, need to help hold it together, despite it all.
In some ways, I am reminded of Amy Bloom’s devastatingly beautiful memoir, “In Love” where she helped her husband, Brian Ameche, achieve assisted death. Obviously, the circumstances were different, but the expression of love shared by both women for their husbands, was whole-hearted.
Still, as I kept reading, I couldn’t help but feel her words were personally relatable.
“Who will die first? Because I was older, because I survived cancer…, I did not ask that question. I just assumed it would be me.”
So, many times I will reflect with humor and truthfulness to my husband, who is 5 years younger, that it is a good thing he is younger. Because I honestly would not know what to do without him. I have enjoyed him being my partner, my protector, my caregiver during the cancer journey, my best friend, and my forever love who I appreciate beyond words. So, much of the simple tasks of life, like driving, or grocery shopping, which he prefers to do, and I prefer not to do. So, he does it for both of us. (I am still intimidated by our electric car.) As a senior software specialist during his career, even in retirement, he continues to be tech savvy. Where the simplest problem, has me shrieking out in frustration. And yet, he just comes in, and with a simple key stroke, it is fixed.
At the same time, I want to consider the tasks of shared living with my partner, so that if something were to happen, I would know how to cope in his absence. I know I avoid these thoughts, but I also know it is something I need to consider seriously. If I should suddenly be alone. And, before that should ever happen, if it does.
But I still assume it will be me going first. But what if it isn’t? Even if I am not ready to go there, Brooks had no choice. She was there.
“Instead, I am here. Missing him. Alone.”
How does one live within their sorrow?
For Brooks, it was to learn to return to the “complicated grief” and “relive the trauma of the death.” It may sound maudlin, but there was much to appreciate in the author’s journey of doing so.
Because what we are learning along the way is what she came to appreciate in feeling all her emotions – to “make more time for the beauty.” Notice everything. Experience everything. Feel everything. Celebrate the moment, because it has “the power to elevate us out of sadness.” Where those enveloped in grief can give themselves time and space to be with their feelings. There is no deadline for getting over grief. And, we shouldn’t expect one.
This is a beautifully written, thoughtful, heart-felt and deeply emotional memoir.
For those who want to understand the impacts of grief or are attempting to process their own grief, readers will appreciate her experience and thoughts. Lovers of this author will value her intimate telling of her love story and grief journey.
Lastly…Two things to do before leaving this book.
First, read the author’s Afterword.
Second, take a look at the back cover insert. There is a pensive picture of the author having coffee with her husband. It is a moment in time, with smiles, that appears precious and thoughtful. Reminding all of us to treasure all those moments we may take for granted. Because, we truly have no idea of what tomorrow will bring.
Caleb’s Crossing – Review Here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
People of the Book – Review Here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Horse – Review Here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
In Love by Amy Bloom – Review Here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
August 22, 2025
In 2019, the author Geraldine Brook’s husband, Anthony Horwitz, a celebrated author & journalist, dropped dead of a heart attack at age 60 on a Washington, D.C. sidewalk, while on a book tour.
Two celebrated authors, living a love story for many decades, came to an abrupt end.
He died on the U.S holiday, Memorial Day. The author, an Australian, would begin her own memorial days as she reminisces on their life together.
Geraldine booked a trip to an island in Australia, her birthplace, to find the time and space to grieve the love of her life.
As a woman who has been married to the love of my life for 42 years, her grief was heart wrenching. As I grow older I can imagine her grief in all too real ways. I’ve known the loss of loved ones (parents, siblings, friends), but not the loss of my husband. I have friends who have weathered the loss of their spouses and/or their children and I’ve witnessed their pain.
How do we navigate the emotions of losing your best friend, your partner through thick and thin, the person who has your back, the one you laugh and cry with? The one you share a history and children with?
I don’t know. I don’t know the answers to navigating the profound grief at losing loved ones. But Geraldine Brooks has given us a blueprint and I found her book to be lovely, heartbreaking, and emotional in all the best ways.
Two celebrated authors, living a love story for many decades, came to an abrupt end.
He died on the U.S holiday, Memorial Day. The author, an Australian, would begin her own memorial days as she reminisces on their life together.
Geraldine booked a trip to an island in Australia, her birthplace, to find the time and space to grieve the love of her life.
As a woman who has been married to the love of my life for 42 years, her grief was heart wrenching. As I grow older I can imagine her grief in all too real ways. I’ve known the loss of loved ones (parents, siblings, friends), but not the loss of my husband. I have friends who have weathered the loss of their spouses and/or their children and I’ve witnessed their pain.
How do we navigate the emotions of losing your best friend, your partner through thick and thin, the person who has your back, the one you laugh and cry with? The one you share a history and children with?
I don’t know. I don’t know the answers to navigating the profound grief at losing loved ones. But Geraldine Brooks has given us a blueprint and I found her book to be lovely, heartbreaking, and emotional in all the best ways.
June 9, 2025
UPDATE (9th June 2025): Please see at bottom of this review
It’s 2019, and Geraldine Brooks, author of the prize-winning novel Horse, finds out her husband, author Tony Horwitz, died suddenly in the middle of a book tour.
This book is a touching account of how Brooks deals with her grief. I suppose there’s no ideal way for a loved one to die, but there is something jarring about it coming out of the blue. I mean, her husband was active and fit, although he did take medications that would increase his BP and excessive alcohol during periods of intense writing. He didn’t seem to live a serene life – he died of a massive coronary event.
Brooks visits beautiful Flinders Island in the Bass Strait (the sea between Tasmania and Victoria) to process this dreadful event. This was particularly moving as she remembered spending time there with Tony. What a wonderful place.
They tried to make life of it in Sydney, but Tony wanted the US, so they settled in Martha’s Vineyard.
There are two grieving sons, a large family and many friends. Tony’s social nature touched so many people. But the enduring memory for me here was the love between Geraldine and Tony. They were the best mates. What a loss. Gone.
I am not angry at Tony. I’m furious at death.
And I loved this one:
May my own death be just as sudden. Spare me the crematorium. Put me straight into the soil. I want to be part of this dance.
A beautiful book.
I truly hope this video works in your region - our wonderful national broadcaster (ABC), has a show called Compass. A recent episode is about this story, this book and Geraldine Brooks' journey and the beautiful love story between her and Tony Horwitz
Here 'tis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nwp-...
It’s 2019, and Geraldine Brooks, author of the prize-winning novel Horse, finds out her husband, author Tony Horwitz, died suddenly in the middle of a book tour.
This book is a touching account of how Brooks deals with her grief. I suppose there’s no ideal way for a loved one to die, but there is something jarring about it coming out of the blue. I mean, her husband was active and fit, although he did take medications that would increase his BP and excessive alcohol during periods of intense writing. He didn’t seem to live a serene life – he died of a massive coronary event.
Brooks visits beautiful Flinders Island in the Bass Strait (the sea between Tasmania and Victoria) to process this dreadful event. This was particularly moving as she remembered spending time there with Tony. What a wonderful place.
They tried to make life of it in Sydney, but Tony wanted the US, so they settled in Martha’s Vineyard.
There are two grieving sons, a large family and many friends. Tony’s social nature touched so many people. But the enduring memory for me here was the love between Geraldine and Tony. They were the best mates. What a loss. Gone.
I am not angry at Tony. I’m furious at death.
And I loved this one:
May my own death be just as sudden. Spare me the crematorium. Put me straight into the soil. I want to be part of this dance.
A beautiful book.
I truly hope this video works in your region - our wonderful national broadcaster (ABC), has a show called Compass. A recent episode is about this story, this book and Geraldine Brooks' journey and the beautiful love story between her and Tony Horwitz
Here 'tis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nwp-...
May 6, 2025
All the stars...and all the hearts, too.
June 15, 2025
Memorial Days
is a memoir of love and grief—a quick read that packs a powerful punch!
Author Geraldine Brooks' thirty-five-year marriage to Tony Horwitz ended with his sudden, unexpected death in 2019. After three years of pretending to herself and everyone else she was okay, she realized she wasn't. She needed to grieve Tony's death, and she needed to do it alone...
Brooks' narrative is open and honest, and what she experiences as the partner who is left behind is both shocking and eye-opening. I admire her for sharing intimate thoughts about her marriage and honest critiques on grieving in our modern society. She admits that her sole purpose in writing this memoir was for herself, but she has discovered that it has benefited many who deal with the challenges of grief and loss.
While reading the book, I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author, whose quiet voice recounts her love story with Tony and how she ultimately navigates the other side of this life-changing event. It was a memorable immersion reading experience.
Memorial Days is the first book I have read by this author, and I loved every word, through to the Afterword, which is a must. I'm looking forward to reading more of Geraldine Brooks' books, beginning with her latest novel, Horse. I've discovered a new-to-me author to love!
5⭐
I want to thank my GR friend who recommended this lovely book. Her kindness has been a true gift!
Thank you, Karen!❣️
Author Geraldine Brooks' thirty-five-year marriage to Tony Horwitz ended with his sudden, unexpected death in 2019. After three years of pretending to herself and everyone else she was okay, she realized she wasn't. She needed to grieve Tony's death, and she needed to do it alone...
Brooks' narrative is open and honest, and what she experiences as the partner who is left behind is both shocking and eye-opening. I admire her for sharing intimate thoughts about her marriage and honest critiques on grieving in our modern society. She admits that her sole purpose in writing this memoir was for herself, but she has discovered that it has benefited many who deal with the challenges of grief and loss.
While reading the book, I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author, whose quiet voice recounts her love story with Tony and how she ultimately navigates the other side of this life-changing event. It was a memorable immersion reading experience.
Memorial Days is the first book I have read by this author, and I loved every word, through to the Afterword, which is a must. I'm looking forward to reading more of Geraldine Brooks' books, beginning with her latest novel, Horse. I've discovered a new-to-me author to love!
5⭐
I want to thank my GR friend who recommended this lovely book. Her kindness has been a true gift!
Thank you, Karen!❣️
July 30, 2025
In Memorial Days author Geraldine Brooks retreats to a remote island in Tasmania to try to come to terms with the sudden death of husband Tony Horwitz and to finally go through the grieving process she had denied herself because of pressing matters that had to be dealt with. The book alternates between the circumstances of his sudden death in Washington, D.C., collapsing on the street while on an extensive book tour with its aftermath, and her time in isolation on Flinders Island to allow herself to mourn. This gripping and absorbing memoir is a tribute to her marriage as she reflects on their life and love over the years, including their early years when she and Tony were both foreign correspondents with posts in Cairo, Sydney and London. There are touching passages about their two sons as well. It can be compared to books written by Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates in chronicling their grieving process. It was wonderful book that can take its literary place with those writers.
“Grief is praise,” writes Martin Prechtel in his book The Smell of Rain on Dust, “because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”
“Solitude has made this space for him.”
“Nature is a remorseless reminder of human insignificance. Daytime, nighttime—there’s no escape from the realization of how little we matter.”
“I merely wish the bereaved some time and space, however long, however short, for melancholy—what Victor Hugo described as the happiness of being sad.”
August 16, 2025
“In the novel “Tom Lake”, Ann Patchett’s protagonist observes: “I know the suffering exists beside wet grass and a bright blue sky recently scrubbed by rain. The beauty and the suffering are equally true.””
~ Geraldine Brooks
I’ve told you this before about Ann Patchett.
This holds true for Geraldine Brooks.
Beware these quiet, demure female writers in their sixtieth, blazing decade. They are pale, they are unassuming, they almost vanish if you stare at them too long.
But these women use the pen like a knife, and they cut slice after slice through the human heart, unflinching and unafraid. They want to know. They want to feel it all.
Had she known how, I believe Geraldine Brooks would have performed the autopsy of her beloved husband herself.
When American journalist and historian Tony Horwitz dies suddenly of cardiac arrest on a street in Chevy Chase, Maryland, on Memorial Day, 2019, his heart has but one last place to go to rest: Geraldine’s words, flung wide on the page, collected like sea debris on the wild shores of Tasmania’s Flinders Island.
Here is a woman bereft, grief-stricken, absent in her days, punch-drunk and stupefied, gathering kindling for the memoir that will restore her to herself, and Tony to the rest of us.
And what a flamboyant light Tony Horwitz was.
If Geraldine is the darkest of new moons, Tony is a blinding sun. How these two stars from opposite sides of the earth smashed into each other on the streets of New York City in the early 80’s, is an improbability to behold. What stunning love this was. How mad and free their adventures.
Native Americans believed that by eating the heart of a deer, the hunter would gain the animal's strength, courage, and spirit.
Beware the quiet, demure, sixty-something female writer-gatherers.
Accept their offerings.
~ Geraldine Brooks
I’ve told you this before about Ann Patchett.
This holds true for Geraldine Brooks.
Beware these quiet, demure female writers in their sixtieth, blazing decade. They are pale, they are unassuming, they almost vanish if you stare at them too long.
But these women use the pen like a knife, and they cut slice after slice through the human heart, unflinching and unafraid. They want to know. They want to feel it all.
Had she known how, I believe Geraldine Brooks would have performed the autopsy of her beloved husband herself.
When American journalist and historian Tony Horwitz dies suddenly of cardiac arrest on a street in Chevy Chase, Maryland, on Memorial Day, 2019, his heart has but one last place to go to rest: Geraldine’s words, flung wide on the page, collected like sea debris on the wild shores of Tasmania’s Flinders Island.
Here is a woman bereft, grief-stricken, absent in her days, punch-drunk and stupefied, gathering kindling for the memoir that will restore her to herself, and Tony to the rest of us.
And what a flamboyant light Tony Horwitz was.
If Geraldine is the darkest of new moons, Tony is a blinding sun. How these two stars from opposite sides of the earth smashed into each other on the streets of New York City in the early 80’s, is an improbability to behold. What stunning love this was. How mad and free their adventures.
Native Americans believed that by eating the heart of a deer, the hunter would gain the animal's strength, courage, and spirit.
Beware the quiet, demure, sixty-something female writer-gatherers.
Accept their offerings.
July 9, 2025
Somewhere back in the 700+ reviews I’ve done on this site I made the remark that, 5 star reads always seem to come in twos, threes, or more. It’s as if I am more receptive to the writing, my mind has opened or I just have a feeling for picking or finding books or having books suddenly come my way that make a real impression. Who can describe or predict this kind of book magic. Listening to Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days, I quickly realized it was happening again and I was in for a beautifully written book that would fill my mind and heart for days to come.
I’ve read a lot of Brooks writing—Year of Wonders, The People of the Book and most recently Horse. All I have enjoyed, The People of the Book, which I encountered first on a trip to Sarajevo is my favorite. This most recent, Memorial Days is a memoir in which she tells about the sudden death of her husband, Tony Horwitz, in 2019 and the days and years that follow. The structure is of two time lines, the day of the death and the months following and three years later when Brooks takes a solitary journey to an island off the coast of Australia to finally escape from all the world and come to terms with her grief. In this book she writes of the beauty of the surroundings and her inner turmoil in finding a way to move on with her life.
She uses quotes from others and the things she learns along the way about herself and the journey she must make. At one point she likens a death/loss to a plane crash high on a mountain, in which one is wounded but must make it down from mountain top alone. She incorporates stories of her background and the marriage they had prior to her husband's death. Here I learned of her days in journalism school when she meets her husband. The early days of their romance. There are also wonderful glimpses of their lives as journalists together for the Wall Street Journal in the Middle East and later the birth of their son and the adoption of her younger son and in more recent times their settled life on Martha’s Vineyard.
Brooks reads the memoir herself and her soft voice makes the melancholy at times palpable and yet also brings her love of the beauty around her as a salve to the soul. I loved this book. It is such a beautiful gift and memoir told with such love. A wonderful tribute.
A great video can be seen on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nwp-...
(hope this works)
I’ve read a lot of Brooks writing—Year of Wonders, The People of the Book and most recently Horse. All I have enjoyed, The People of the Book, which I encountered first on a trip to Sarajevo is my favorite. This most recent, Memorial Days is a memoir in which she tells about the sudden death of her husband, Tony Horwitz, in 2019 and the days and years that follow. The structure is of two time lines, the day of the death and the months following and three years later when Brooks takes a solitary journey to an island off the coast of Australia to finally escape from all the world and come to terms with her grief. In this book she writes of the beauty of the surroundings and her inner turmoil in finding a way to move on with her life.
She uses quotes from others and the things she learns along the way about herself and the journey she must make. At one point she likens a death/loss to a plane crash high on a mountain, in which one is wounded but must make it down from mountain top alone. She incorporates stories of her background and the marriage they had prior to her husband's death. Here I learned of her days in journalism school when she meets her husband. The early days of their romance. There are also wonderful glimpses of their lives as journalists together for the Wall Street Journal in the Middle East and later the birth of their son and the adoption of her younger son and in more recent times their settled life on Martha’s Vineyard.
Brooks reads the memoir herself and her soft voice makes the melancholy at times palpable and yet also brings her love of the beauty around her as a salve to the soul. I loved this book. It is such a beautiful gift and memoir told with such love. A wonderful tribute.
A great video can be seen on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nwp-...
(hope this works)
February 13, 2025
According to kabbalistic teachings, a Jewish soul is only on earth until its mission is complete. One tragically reads about children dying or a young parent who might have been taken “before their time.” There is no before their time because G-D rules the world; however, even if everything on earth occurs in it’s appointed time, it does not take away from the grieving of loved ones. Until last year I did not deem myself at the correct stage in life to read books about death, dying, or grief. I don’t know if I ever will be, preferring everything to have a happy ending and lamenting deaths in books. Even my most memorable dream involves a cyborg who has achieved eternal life, reminding us that the world did not end with COVID. One would think that myself a religious person would understand that death comes at it’s appointed time, but it is the end of life and appointed times that I still cannot come to terms with, and hopefully will not for a long time (G-D willing). Geraldine Brooks had not come to terms with the death of her spouse Tony Horwitz who was stricken down in the supposed prime of his life. After five years Brooks had not carved out ample time for herself to grieve and heal. Memorial Days is her personal response.
Although not Jewish by birth, Brooks converted prior to marriage because religion meant more to her husband’s family than to her own. While studying for conversion, Brooks learned of religious practices so that she could live as a member of the tribe. One practice that touched her was shiva and shloshim, the Jewish practices that occur with the death of a close family member. These practices are not for the dead but so that the living can take to heart. In the course of her career and world travels, Brooks found that other older religions also allow family members space to grieve. In one of the aboriginal religions that is 40,000 years old, the entire community mourns the loss of a member. In more “recent” monotheistic religions, it is immediate family members who are given the place to process their loss. Brooks’ critique of modern society is that it is too fast paced and notably devoid of most religious practices. While this does not seem to affect her on a daily basis, she does note that in today’s world, there should be space for loved ones to grieve. In her life, this was not possible for nearly five years. She desired closure or at least personal space to mourn the love of her life in order for her to live as a whole person again.
Brooks traveled to Flinders Island off of Tasmania for five weeks in order to process her grieving. This was done after she wrote Horse during COVID lockdown, a book she was not sure of but her husband had encouraged her to complete. From her 18th century Martha’s Vineyard home, she wrote the second half and dedicated it to her husband. That release was not enough. If anything, it was a timely reminder that her husband of over thirty years was no longer with her. On a book tour he dropped dead of a heart attack that was probably waiting to happen. Again, G-D decides when is everyone’s time and that was Tony’s. From this writing, he was the go getter, the one who connived officials to let him into front lines to get the first run of a story, the life of a party. Brooks herself, is much more subdued and a natural introvert. They made a perfect team and reported together in Cairo, London, and Sydney up until the birth of their first child, necessitating Brooks to switch careers from reporter to novelist. Eventually Tony would switch as well yet his books brought out the reporter in him because that is who he was. On his book tour, Spying on the South had just gotten onto the New York Times best seller list. It retraced Frederick Law Olmstead’s travels prior to the civil war, investigating themes that look to split this country apart again. Horwitz’ reporting style was made for our current world situation but was not to be. He was as American to the core as Brooks’ is Australian. Martha’s Vineyard was their compromise but the introvert in her could have spent the rest of her life on Flinder’s Island, which is rural and off the grid.
Becoming one with nature, Brooks finally is able to grieve five years later. This is her shiva, which stretches to more than the thirty day shloshim. She would chart sunrises and sunsets, marvel in the fauna and flora of her native country and wonder what might have been had she convinced her American husband to become a full time Aussie. Here she reads Tony’s journals and relishes in the early days of their relationship. At the same time, she notes that her older son pointed out that Tony is present in the room always because everyone continues to mention him and bask in his memories. If he would light up a room or take that first swim before sunset, then that is how people should continue to remember him. Now he is present in unrevealed ways but in her grieving process Brooks realizes that his soul’s mission had been complete. She couldn’t not continue to go through life, however long it lasts, lamenting that her husband drank too much alcohol and coffee. According to the doctors, cutting out those practices might have only made a difference of a few months. It was his time ad finite. On a remote Australian isle, Brooks contemplated how her life might have panned out should she have convinced her husband to stay in Sydney. They could have been an Australian family and lived on Flinders rather than Martha’s, relishing the flight of the geese and salty marshy ocean. In Sydney their children would have grown up as proud Aussies; however, she realized in her grief that it would have never worked. That was her compromise. Perhaps now untethered she will return to her native land that gave her the opportunity to mourn her loss.
Last year I read Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, which won the National Book Award. Another gifted writer, Didion also used writing as a means of coping with her husband’s untimely death. Brooks brought this memoir with her to Flinders. In her copy, she saw that Tony had highlighted the work as being panned and name dropping, which made Brooks laugh. Tony always highlighted the books that he read; she kept his copies so that they could forever debate works of literature. That Brooks is an adept writer is not to be debated. She has won the Pulitzer twice, the second for Horse, the book that Tony encouraged her to finish. Memorial Days is slim but just as compelling in its own right. I first found Brooks with her first work of nonfiction Foreign Correspondence so I knew that she was also a superb nonfiction writer. That she could sustain these high levels of writing in a book so personal speaks to the professionalism of her writing and probably her capacity for empathy as well. She contrasts religion’s dictate for family to take the time to mourn with those of modern society for everything to keep running as though a loss didn’t happen. Brooks notes that in modern times there should still be a place for shloshim. Yes, there should because no one knows when their time is and it allows the living their space. I am glad that Brooks got her space to grieve. Her words are prolific as always, maybe not what I would generally when sick in bed, but prolific.
4.5 stars
Although not Jewish by birth, Brooks converted prior to marriage because religion meant more to her husband’s family than to her own. While studying for conversion, Brooks learned of religious practices so that she could live as a member of the tribe. One practice that touched her was shiva and shloshim, the Jewish practices that occur with the death of a close family member. These practices are not for the dead but so that the living can take to heart. In the course of her career and world travels, Brooks found that other older religions also allow family members space to grieve. In one of the aboriginal religions that is 40,000 years old, the entire community mourns the loss of a member. In more “recent” monotheistic religions, it is immediate family members who are given the place to process their loss. Brooks’ critique of modern society is that it is too fast paced and notably devoid of most religious practices. While this does not seem to affect her on a daily basis, she does note that in today’s world, there should be space for loved ones to grieve. In her life, this was not possible for nearly five years. She desired closure or at least personal space to mourn the love of her life in order for her to live as a whole person again.
Brooks traveled to Flinders Island off of Tasmania for five weeks in order to process her grieving. This was done after she wrote Horse during COVID lockdown, a book she was not sure of but her husband had encouraged her to complete. From her 18th century Martha’s Vineyard home, she wrote the second half and dedicated it to her husband. That release was not enough. If anything, it was a timely reminder that her husband of over thirty years was no longer with her. On a book tour he dropped dead of a heart attack that was probably waiting to happen. Again, G-D decides when is everyone’s time and that was Tony’s. From this writing, he was the go getter, the one who connived officials to let him into front lines to get the first run of a story, the life of a party. Brooks herself, is much more subdued and a natural introvert. They made a perfect team and reported together in Cairo, London, and Sydney up until the birth of their first child, necessitating Brooks to switch careers from reporter to novelist. Eventually Tony would switch as well yet his books brought out the reporter in him because that is who he was. On his book tour, Spying on the South had just gotten onto the New York Times best seller list. It retraced Frederick Law Olmstead’s travels prior to the civil war, investigating themes that look to split this country apart again. Horwitz’ reporting style was made for our current world situation but was not to be. He was as American to the core as Brooks’ is Australian. Martha’s Vineyard was their compromise but the introvert in her could have spent the rest of her life on Flinder’s Island, which is rural and off the grid.
Becoming one with nature, Brooks finally is able to grieve five years later. This is her shiva, which stretches to more than the thirty day shloshim. She would chart sunrises and sunsets, marvel in the fauna and flora of her native country and wonder what might have been had she convinced her American husband to become a full time Aussie. Here she reads Tony’s journals and relishes in the early days of their relationship. At the same time, she notes that her older son pointed out that Tony is present in the room always because everyone continues to mention him and bask in his memories. If he would light up a room or take that first swim before sunset, then that is how people should continue to remember him. Now he is present in unrevealed ways but in her grieving process Brooks realizes that his soul’s mission had been complete. She couldn’t not continue to go through life, however long it lasts, lamenting that her husband drank too much alcohol and coffee. According to the doctors, cutting out those practices might have only made a difference of a few months. It was his time ad finite. On a remote Australian isle, Brooks contemplated how her life might have panned out should she have convinced her husband to stay in Sydney. They could have been an Australian family and lived on Flinders rather than Martha’s, relishing the flight of the geese and salty marshy ocean. In Sydney their children would have grown up as proud Aussies; however, she realized in her grief that it would have never worked. That was her compromise. Perhaps now untethered she will return to her native land that gave her the opportunity to mourn her loss.
Last year I read Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, which won the National Book Award. Another gifted writer, Didion also used writing as a means of coping with her husband’s untimely death. Brooks brought this memoir with her to Flinders. In her copy, she saw that Tony had highlighted the work as being panned and name dropping, which made Brooks laugh. Tony always highlighted the books that he read; she kept his copies so that they could forever debate works of literature. That Brooks is an adept writer is not to be debated. She has won the Pulitzer twice, the second for Horse, the book that Tony encouraged her to finish. Memorial Days is slim but just as compelling in its own right. I first found Brooks with her first work of nonfiction Foreign Correspondence so I knew that she was also a superb nonfiction writer. That she could sustain these high levels of writing in a book so personal speaks to the professionalism of her writing and probably her capacity for empathy as well. She contrasts religion’s dictate for family to take the time to mourn with those of modern society for everything to keep running as though a loss didn’t happen. Brooks notes that in modern times there should still be a place for shloshim. Yes, there should because no one knows when their time is and it allows the living their space. I am glad that Brooks got her space to grieve. Her words are prolific as always, maybe not what I would generally when sick in bed, but prolific.
4.5 stars
March 10, 2025
26th of May, 2019: Geraldine Brooks was at home and her husband Tony Horwitz was in Washington, D. C. when she got a call telling her he collapsed on a footpath, initially she thought he survived and then she was bluntly told he was dead. Geraldine met Tony at college, they dated and married and travelled the world as correspondents, in dangerous war zones and how could her healthy sixty year old husband of thirty year suddenly die.
Geraldine was alone at their house on Lambert’s Cove, Martha’s Vineyard, and she couldn't comprehend how she was going to tell her children and let alone anyone else. With the help from Tony’s brother she had to quickly organise a funeral and memorial service, the family’s solicitor and accountant wanted to meet with her and she was in the middle of writing a book and none of these things could wait.
Geraldine held herself together and it was like she was surrounded by a shield, and it blocked her from feeling how she should and that’s devastated over the loss of her soul mate and she didn’t cry or have time to grieve.
Three years later and post Covid, Geraldine books a flight to Australia and Tasmania and a shack on Flinders Island. A remote and rugged coastal place, with stunning views and blue seas and she shares it with rare birds and marsupials including Cape Barron Geese, wallabies, pademelons and possums.
I received a copy of Memorial Day from Edelweiss Plus and Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review. Geraldine Brooks looks back at her life she had with Tony, a couple who had so much in common, both were journalists and prize winning authors. After his death the praise and accolades were nice and he left behind a legacy in his work and links to colleagues.
I’m glad Geraldine the person and widow got a chance to grieve in private and away from the public eye, a moving story about love and laughter, loss and pain, reflection and family and how life can be very unfair and she adored him and four stars from me.
Geraldine was alone at their house on Lambert’s Cove, Martha’s Vineyard, and she couldn't comprehend how she was going to tell her children and let alone anyone else. With the help from Tony’s brother she had to quickly organise a funeral and memorial service, the family’s solicitor and accountant wanted to meet with her and she was in the middle of writing a book and none of these things could wait.
Geraldine held herself together and it was like she was surrounded by a shield, and it blocked her from feeling how she should and that’s devastated over the loss of her soul mate and she didn’t cry or have time to grieve.
Three years later and post Covid, Geraldine books a flight to Australia and Tasmania and a shack on Flinders Island. A remote and rugged coastal place, with stunning views and blue seas and she shares it with rare birds and marsupials including Cape Barron Geese, wallabies, pademelons and possums.
I received a copy of Memorial Day from Edelweiss Plus and Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review. Geraldine Brooks looks back at her life she had with Tony, a couple who had so much in common, both were journalists and prize winning authors. After his death the praise and accolades were nice and he left behind a legacy in his work and links to colleagues.
I’m glad Geraldine the person and widow got a chance to grieve in private and away from the public eye, a moving story about love and laughter, loss and pain, reflection and family and how life can be very unfair and she adored him and four stars from me.
April 12, 2025
❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
What a treasure this is. One of the best memoirs on grief and loss I’ve read. It has the power to help guide one through the heartbreak and prepare the way for what may, and probably will come one of these days, for many of us. I consumed it in one day.
“One thing was apparent right away: my time alone in nature restored me, as nature always does. In the novel Tom Lake, Ann Patchett’s protagonist observes:
I know the suffering exists beside wet grass and a bright blue sky recently scrubbed by rain. The beauty and the suffering are equally true.
At home now I make more time for the beauty. I make it a point to notice…these encounters, more than almost anything else, have the power to elevate me out of sadness.”
What a treasure this is. One of the best memoirs on grief and loss I’ve read. It has the power to help guide one through the heartbreak and prepare the way for what may, and probably will come one of these days, for many of us. I consumed it in one day.
“One thing was apparent right away: my time alone in nature restored me, as nature always does. In the novel Tom Lake, Ann Patchett’s protagonist observes:
I know the suffering exists beside wet grass and a bright blue sky recently scrubbed by rain. The beauty and the suffering are equally true.
At home now I make more time for the beauty. I make it a point to notice…these encounters, more than almost anything else, have the power to elevate me out of sadness.”
February 26, 2025
I wanted to love this book so much because I’ve loved her other works of fiction. Ironically, I have the same critique of this book that her late husband had of Joan Didian’s book A Year of Magical Thinking. I think it is self indulgent and has a lot of unnecessary name dropping of famous institutions, famous people famous places that could have been written in many cases without the name dropping quality because it was irrelevant, self congratulatory and unnecessary to understanding the anecdote. I’ve read other books in which people talk about something emotionally big that has happened to them in memoir form, but those books do a better job keeping to the themes of their emotions or common/ relatable experiences without delving into the minutia of regaling someone’s privileged life, which is the alienating factor. I am a well educated, well-read , cosmopolitan person, so this is not sour grapes talking. I simply just think this book is kind of self involved and forgot to consider that there is an audience outside the author. Sadly, I don’t even think it does a good job, creating empathy for someone who suddenly lost a person they love so much, which should be universally relatable.
August 13, 2025
How could this story not be a five star book?
Geraldine Brooks was happily married to Tony Horwitz for many years. They met in grad school at NYU and both were eventually correspondents for various news outlets. They traveled to all the hot spots to report and then finally settled in Australia for awhile. However, Tony was USA born and bred and wanted to return there.
They finally did and settled in Martha's Vineyard, had two sons, one of who was adopted from Ethiopia. They were happy, had many friends and family surrounding them and life went on. Geraldine found successes in writing book and Tony did as well. Life was good.
Then the awful happened when Tony dropped dead on a street in Washington DC. He was only sixty.
This book was the way in which Mrs. Horwitz was able to eventually heal. She found solace her best company where she could reminisce, feel Tony's presence, and finally being able to scream. She finds that in a secluded island near Australia.
It's a sad tale, one many of us have lived through. The shock of losing someone we loved, the realization that they are gone, the thoughts of the things that would never be.
A beautiful tribute to Tony and the love they shared for one another.
Geraldine Brooks was happily married to Tony Horwitz for many years. They met in grad school at NYU and both were eventually correspondents for various news outlets. They traveled to all the hot spots to report and then finally settled in Australia for awhile. However, Tony was USA born and bred and wanted to return there.
They finally did and settled in Martha's Vineyard, had two sons, one of who was adopted from Ethiopia. They were happy, had many friends and family surrounding them and life went on. Geraldine found successes in writing book and Tony did as well. Life was good.
Then the awful happened when Tony dropped dead on a street in Washington DC. He was only sixty.
This book was the way in which Mrs. Horwitz was able to eventually heal. She found solace her best company where she could reminisce, feel Tony's presence, and finally being able to scream. She finds that in a secluded island near Australia.
It's a sad tale, one many of us have lived through. The shock of losing someone we loved, the realization that they are gone, the thoughts of the things that would never be.
A beautiful tribute to Tony and the love they shared for one another.
February 16, 2025
I don’t know if my heart was ready for this memoir about grief, but since there is no way I would ever give up the opportunity to read one of my favorite authors, I chose to allow the heartbreak. I am so glad I did. Once again, and for the second book in a row for me, my soul grew a little bit in the hands of a brilliant writer. The way Brooks bares her own soul and grief at the premature loss of her beloved husband, was both sorrowful and uplifting. She chooses to write from both the present and the recent past (beginning the day she received that awful phone call) which both plunged me into the moment, while also giving me moments of respite as she works through her grief on a remote Tasmanian island. The juxtaposition is so wise.
I read this in two sittings, all the while grateful for my own marriage and terrified of facing a tragedy like hers. I am in awe of her courage and openness and so grateful she chose to share her story. I was, of course, reminded of The Year of Magical Thinking by the equally brilliant Joan Didion. Neither are easy reads, but both are reminders of how important it is to fully grieve those we love.
I read this in two sittings, all the while grateful for my own marriage and terrified of facing a tragedy like hers. I am in awe of her courage and openness and so grateful she chose to share her story. I was, of course, reminded of The Year of Magical Thinking by the equally brilliant Joan Didion. Neither are easy reads, but both are reminders of how important it is to fully grieve those we love.
August 21, 2024
When I first heard about this book I couldn’t wait to read it. Turns out that was for good reason. I had never read Brooks before but was very interested in her foray into nonfiction. On Memorial Day in 2019 her well known husband, Tony Horwitz, suddenly dies from a cardiac event. This is her grief journey as she confronts his passing 3 years later. Often those grieving aren’t given the time and space to process their loss which leads to complicated grief. Her ability to find the space and time and tell us about their life together, his tragic death and her reaction is chronicled in a powerful, heartfelt, and well written way. This book deserves a place next to “A year of magical thinking” and it is also an amazing way to honor her husband. I would definitely recommend this book!
February 16, 2025
This review was published in the “Charleston Gazette Mail” Saturday-Sunday February 15-16, 2025.
“Memorial Days: A Memoir” by Geraldine Brooks, February 4, 2025, Viking/Penguin, 161 pages.
My dad, Tom Brewster, died in August of last year, so this is for my mother.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks (“People of the Book,” “March”) lost her husbands - historian, journalist and author Tony Horowitz - to a massive, sudden heart attack over the Memorial Day weekend 2019. At the time, she was working on the book “Horse” at their home on Martha’s Vineyard, and he was on a book tour in Washington, D.C. (he died at the same hospital where he was born. He was only 60 years old at the time of his death.
Given the busy work of burying her husband and handling the after effects of the death of one’s spouse, including dealing with history estate, raising their teenage son (their eldest had graduated from college) and finishing her book and touring with it, Brooks felt she had not taken the time necessary to grieve the loss of Tony and their love.
“I have cast myself in a role: woman being normal” she writes.
So three years after Tony’s death she feels ready and she goes to Flinders Island near the coast of Tasmania, a fairly desolate locale relatively close to her native Australia.
She and Tony had visited the island together and the location represented a “road not taken” for her, back from a time in her youth when she chose between graduate school in the United States versus work as a wilderness advocate back home. The island and the three-room shack (with outhouse) that she is renting on the beach will be a place to be alone with her thoughts and to face the enormity of what has happened to her life, and to Tony.
“I have not allowed myself the wild wideness of an elaborate, florid, demonstrative grief,” she writes. “Instead it has been this long feeling of constriction, of holding it in and tamping it down and not letting it show.”
The book is told in interspersed chapters between the “then” of 2019 and the aftermath and the “now” of her time on Flinders Island.
Brooks explains that she is a Deist, but is no more specific than that in her beliefs and she doesn’t believe there is anything after death, so she does not think she will see Tony again. She spends a small amount of time on other cultures and specific mourning periods, such that some people know when “mourning” is over.
The rest of the time on the island is day by day. She almost never sees other people. She swims, she walks, she remembers, she survives. She has moments of misery, moments of joy. She is there for awhile. “I resolved to be grateful.”
As always Brooks is a powerful writer, and with this short volume she pens a book worthy of sitting alongside Joan Didion’s seminal “The Year of Magical Thinking” on the “grief” shelf.
“Memorial Days: A Memoir” by Geraldine Brooks, February 4, 2025, Viking/Penguin, 161 pages.
My dad, Tom Brewster, died in August of last year, so this is for my mother.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks (“People of the Book,” “March”) lost her husbands - historian, journalist and author Tony Horowitz - to a massive, sudden heart attack over the Memorial Day weekend 2019. At the time, she was working on the book “Horse” at their home on Martha’s Vineyard, and he was on a book tour in Washington, D.C. (he died at the same hospital where he was born. He was only 60 years old at the time of his death.
Given the busy work of burying her husband and handling the after effects of the death of one’s spouse, including dealing with history estate, raising their teenage son (their eldest had graduated from college) and finishing her book and touring with it, Brooks felt she had not taken the time necessary to grieve the loss of Tony and their love.
“I have cast myself in a role: woman being normal” she writes.
So three years after Tony’s death she feels ready and she goes to Flinders Island near the coast of Tasmania, a fairly desolate locale relatively close to her native Australia.
She and Tony had visited the island together and the location represented a “road not taken” for her, back from a time in her youth when she chose between graduate school in the United States versus work as a wilderness advocate back home. The island and the three-room shack (with outhouse) that she is renting on the beach will be a place to be alone with her thoughts and to face the enormity of what has happened to her life, and to Tony.
“I have not allowed myself the wild wideness of an elaborate, florid, demonstrative grief,” she writes. “Instead it has been this long feeling of constriction, of holding it in and tamping it down and not letting it show.”
The book is told in interspersed chapters between the “then” of 2019 and the aftermath and the “now” of her time on Flinders Island.
Brooks explains that she is a Deist, but is no more specific than that in her beliefs and she doesn’t believe there is anything after death, so she does not think she will see Tony again. She spends a small amount of time on other cultures and specific mourning periods, such that some people know when “mourning” is over.
The rest of the time on the island is day by day. She almost never sees other people. She swims, she walks, she remembers, she survives. She has moments of misery, moments of joy. She is there for awhile. “I resolved to be grateful.”
As always Brooks is a powerful writer, and with this short volume she pens a book worthy of sitting alongside Joan Didion’s seminal “The Year of Magical Thinking” on the “grief” shelf.
March 12, 2025
A beautiful examination of grief and loss and the weight of tasks that those left behind have to carry before they can truly grieve. This is the experience Geraldine Brooks had when her healthy husband unexpectedly died after leaving a cafe on a business trip at the young age of sixty. Brooks was left with two sons, one who was away at college and a mountain of issues with health insurance and finances. There were so many tasks to take care of that she felt there was little compassion for her situation. She and her children didn't have time to grieve. Almost four years after his death, Brooks heads to an Australian island to process her grief. Her revelations of this time period are illuminating and the concept that joy and pain can coexist. This is a must-read for anyone who has lost a loved one.
March 24, 2025
Memorial Days is a moving memoir about grief, written by author Geraldine Brooks. She reflects on her marriage to fellow author, Tony Horowitz, their life together, and the aftermath of unexpectedly losing him in 2019.
Brooks shares the challenges she faced following her husband’s death, with their finances, his will, etc. as he was the primary account holder on many of their accounts and assets. There was a lot of red tape as she attempted to get things in order. I was annoyed and frustrated on her behalf reading this. Additionally, Brooks shares the blatant lack of compassion from the doctor delivering the worst news of her life to her when Tony died.
I am glad Brooks was able to find time to get away and attempt to process her grief, although much later than you’d hope for anyone going through this. I loved Horse when I read it in 2023, my favorite book I read that year, and now, marvel at how Brooks was able to write such an excellent story while her own world had been shattered. Her nonfiction writing in Memorial Days is equally great.
Memorial Days is a moving story about grief and a reminder to enjoy and appreciate the time we have.
Brooks shares the challenges she faced following her husband’s death, with their finances, his will, etc. as he was the primary account holder on many of their accounts and assets. There was a lot of red tape as she attempted to get things in order. I was annoyed and frustrated on her behalf reading this. Additionally, Brooks shares the blatant lack of compassion from the doctor delivering the worst news of her life to her when Tony died.
I am glad Brooks was able to find time to get away and attempt to process her grief, although much later than you’d hope for anyone going through this. I loved Horse when I read it in 2023, my favorite book I read that year, and now, marvel at how Brooks was able to write such an excellent story while her own world had been shattered. Her nonfiction writing in Memorial Days is equally great.
Memorial Days is a moving story about grief and a reminder to enjoy and appreciate the time we have.
June 30, 2025
Lovely, moving, and miles better than Didion's meditation on grief.
February 26, 2025
“This story of a death is the story that dominates my life. Here I have retold it, rethought it. But I can’t change it. Tony is dead. Present tense. He will be dead, in the present, in my present, for as long as I am alive. I cannot change that story. I can only change myself. Write the truest thing you know, said old man Hemingway. Dear reader, this is it.” ~ Geraldine Brooks
On Memorial Day of May 27, 2019, author Geraldine Brooks was home alone in West Tisbury, Massachusetts on Martha’s Vineyard, halfway through writing her latest novel, Horse, when she received a shattering phone call from a harried employee of a Washington, DC hospital: Her husband of 35 years, Tony Horwitz, age 60, had died of apparent cardiac arrest on a sidewalk in Chevy Chase, MD. Tony was completing an arduous promotional tour for his latest book, Spying On The South. Memorial Days is both Brooks’ tribute to Tony and their long, loving partnership and a chronicle of the demands of death and grief. Brooks alternates chapters between the time shortly following Tony’s death, set mostly in West Tisbury, and the five solitary weeks she spent, almost 4 years later, on a remote island in the Bass Strait finally processing her grief. Written with honesty and love, this story never crosses into the maudlin or melodramatic. It is a brave narrative of coming to terms with unexpected and life-changing loss.
“I didn’t know I would feel this way. I certainly hadn’t been afraid to be by myself, but I hadn’t realized how much I would embrace it. Now it is beginning to feel like an addiction. I am craving the absolute serenity of an unpeopled landscape. And then I understand that I have not been alone. I am reveling in this time because I am with Tony. In this solitude, finally, I can think about him undistracted. I can read his journals and commune with his thoughts. I can even do what I believed his death had denied me: learn new things about him . . . Solitude has made this space for him.”
~ Geraldine Brooks from Flinder’s Island
On Memorial Day of May 27, 2019, author Geraldine Brooks was home alone in West Tisbury, Massachusetts on Martha’s Vineyard, halfway through writing her latest novel, Horse, when she received a shattering phone call from a harried employee of a Washington, DC hospital: Her husband of 35 years, Tony Horwitz, age 60, had died of apparent cardiac arrest on a sidewalk in Chevy Chase, MD. Tony was completing an arduous promotional tour for his latest book, Spying On The South. Memorial Days is both Brooks’ tribute to Tony and their long, loving partnership and a chronicle of the demands of death and grief. Brooks alternates chapters between the time shortly following Tony’s death, set mostly in West Tisbury, and the five solitary weeks she spent, almost 4 years later, on a remote island in the Bass Strait finally processing her grief. Written with honesty and love, this story never crosses into the maudlin or melodramatic. It is a brave narrative of coming to terms with unexpected and life-changing loss.
“I didn’t know I would feel this way. I certainly hadn’t been afraid to be by myself, but I hadn’t realized how much I would embrace it. Now it is beginning to feel like an addiction. I am craving the absolute serenity of an unpeopled landscape. And then I understand that I have not been alone. I am reveling in this time because I am with Tony. In this solitude, finally, I can think about him undistracted. I can read his journals and commune with his thoughts. I can even do what I believed his death had denied me: learn new things about him . . . Solitude has made this space for him.”
~ Geraldine Brooks from Flinder’s Island
March 26, 2025
A truly moving memoir. Geraldine Brooks' writes thoughtfully about how her life was completely upended when her husband, Tony Horwitz, dies suddenly denying them the opportunity to age together, and leaving her to navigate the world alone. She tells of her personal journey through grief.
Quotes:
"For even sitting there at the airport, wrapped in sadness, I knew to be thankful for these obituaries. They reminded me how much life Tony had packed into his sixty years and how easily it could have been sooner if any one of the crazy risks we took in our reporting years had gone the wrong way."
"After dinner, we retreated to our hotel and wrapped ourselves in the warm love of bodies long familiar with each other."
"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Lines from a poem by Mary Oliver read at Tony's memorial service.
"It is an extraordinary chance to have existed at all, a rare and marvelous happenstance to have lived an experienced consciousness. Even more rare and marvelous in this riven aching world to have thrived, to have found love, joy, security, fulfillment."
"We had no deathbed conversation. I will never know what wisdom Tony would have wanted to impart if he'd been given the chance. I do know this, my job is to carry his light, to keep him vibrantly illuminated for my sons and for their children, his grandchildren whenever they get here."
"Tell your story [...] take control of this essential moment in the narrative of your life."
Quotes:
"For even sitting there at the airport, wrapped in sadness, I knew to be thankful for these obituaries. They reminded me how much life Tony had packed into his sixty years and how easily it could have been sooner if any one of the crazy risks we took in our reporting years had gone the wrong way."
"After dinner, we retreated to our hotel and wrapped ourselves in the warm love of bodies long familiar with each other."
"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Lines from a poem by Mary Oliver read at Tony's memorial service.
"It is an extraordinary chance to have existed at all, a rare and marvelous happenstance to have lived an experienced consciousness. Even more rare and marvelous in this riven aching world to have thrived, to have found love, joy, security, fulfillment."
"We had no deathbed conversation. I will never know what wisdom Tony would have wanted to impart if he'd been given the chance. I do know this, my job is to carry his light, to keep him vibrantly illuminated for my sons and for their children, his grandchildren whenever they get here."
"Tell your story [...] take control of this essential moment in the narrative of your life."
March 4, 2025
A deep as it gets sharing of her grief at her husband's death in 2019 is the subject of Geraldine Brooks lastest book. Heartfelt and exploring all the ways his absence has and will continue to imprint on her and her family's life will be instantly relatable for everyone who has gone through such an experience.
Gentle and told with a patience for her fellow beings and an ineffable cosmos from the valley of her own grief, this is a lovely and reverent read.
Gentle and told with a patience for her fellow beings and an ineffable cosmos from the valley of her own grief, this is a lovely and reverent read.
February 25, 2025
What a powerful book about love, loss, nature, and the depths of tragic circumstances. Geraldine Brooks is a master storyteller.
May 4, 2025
Memorial Days is a memoir by award-winning, best-selling Australian author, Geraldine Brooks. When, in late May 2019, Geraldine learned of the sudden death of her husband of thirty-five years, Tony Horwitz, she didn’t get the chance to grieve. Four years on, in 2023, she travelled to Flinders Island where, in a remote little shack, she allowed herself to do so.
That first notification call to their Massachusetts home by the ER doctor at George Washington Hospital in DC was utterly devoid of any empathy, and a later call to the same ER offered a jaw-dropping lack of sensitivity. Geraldine experienced a roller-coaster of care: the DC policeman who spoke to her was considerate and gentle, as was the first person to find Tony, collapsed in the street, and neighbours in West Tisbury who would care for her horse and dogs.
In that immediate aftermath, there was so much pressure on legal and financial fronts, and on acknowledging a tsunami of condolences, she couldn’t permit herself the time and space to deeply grieve. Instead “I’ve moved around in public acting out a series of convincing scenes, one endless, exhausting performance.” That is what she went to Flinders Island to allow herself to do.
“I have only a loose notion of how I will spend my time here. I will walk and reflect, taking whatever solace nature cares to offer me. I will write down everything I can recall about Tony’s death and its aftermath. I will allow myself time and space to think about our marriage and to experience the emotions I’ve suppressed.”
Geraldine explores how the different cultures deal with death, noting how most faith traditions “put guardrails around the bereaved, rules for what to do in those days of massive confusion when the world has collapsed.”
She had a book to finish, but it wasn’t something that could happen with “the beast of grief clinging to me, claws as intractable as fish hooks”
Towards the end of the book, she begs for reform of the US medical-forensic establishment’s inhumane practices, which prevented her gaining comfort from being with Tony, and forced her to ID from a photo. And she implores the reader to write a guide to their household, to help those left behind after a sudden death.
Much of what Brooks writes about the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death can’t fail to have the reader choking up, tears welling, and it’s difficult to imagine that she wasn’t writing this with tears streaming down her face. Her grief will resonate with many readers, and her experience will shock and move. Beautifully told, full of love.
That first notification call to their Massachusetts home by the ER doctor at George Washington Hospital in DC was utterly devoid of any empathy, and a later call to the same ER offered a jaw-dropping lack of sensitivity. Geraldine experienced a roller-coaster of care: the DC policeman who spoke to her was considerate and gentle, as was the first person to find Tony, collapsed in the street, and neighbours in West Tisbury who would care for her horse and dogs.
In that immediate aftermath, there was so much pressure on legal and financial fronts, and on acknowledging a tsunami of condolences, she couldn’t permit herself the time and space to deeply grieve. Instead “I’ve moved around in public acting out a series of convincing scenes, one endless, exhausting performance.” That is what she went to Flinders Island to allow herself to do.
“I have only a loose notion of how I will spend my time here. I will walk and reflect, taking whatever solace nature cares to offer me. I will write down everything I can recall about Tony’s death and its aftermath. I will allow myself time and space to think about our marriage and to experience the emotions I’ve suppressed.”
Geraldine explores how the different cultures deal with death, noting how most faith traditions “put guardrails around the bereaved, rules for what to do in those days of massive confusion when the world has collapsed.”
She had a book to finish, but it wasn’t something that could happen with “the beast of grief clinging to me, claws as intractable as fish hooks”
Towards the end of the book, she begs for reform of the US medical-forensic establishment’s inhumane practices, which prevented her gaining comfort from being with Tony, and forced her to ID from a photo. And she implores the reader to write a guide to their household, to help those left behind after a sudden death.
Much of what Brooks writes about the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death can’t fail to have the reader choking up, tears welling, and it’s difficult to imagine that she wasn’t writing this with tears streaming down her face. Her grief will resonate with many readers, and her experience will shock and move. Beautifully told, full of love.
May 31, 2025
This quick and emotional read is a beautiful tribute to the author's late husband and to the rich and loving life they shared.
When Tony Horwitz collapsed and died on Memorial Day in 2019, he was in the middle of a book tour, far from his Martha's Vineyard home. The first Geraldine Brooks knew of his death was when she took that unexpected phonecall from an exhausted hospital resident. No handholding or sympathetic looks - just a brief, factual relaying of information. This was the beginning of Brooks' nightmare of bureaucracy in the face of loss. She had been in the early stages of writing her novel, Horse, but naturally that was set aside for some time as she grappled with all that was involved, both practically and emotionally, in transitioning their small family from four people to three. Under this enormous burden there was simply no time to grieve.
Three years later Brooks arrived on Flinders Island, on her own, to reflect on what they'd had, what she'd lost, and what it means to mourn a loved one.
The contrast between those frantic, frustrating months in the US following Tony's passing, and the quiet, slow solitude of Flinders Island, is stark. As one of my favourite authors, I'm glad Brooks was able to gift herself the space and time to do what she needed to do, and that we readers now have the privilege of being able to read this beautiful memoir.
When Tony Horwitz collapsed and died on Memorial Day in 2019, he was in the middle of a book tour, far from his Martha's Vineyard home. The first Geraldine Brooks knew of his death was when she took that unexpected phonecall from an exhausted hospital resident. No handholding or sympathetic looks - just a brief, factual relaying of information. This was the beginning of Brooks' nightmare of bureaucracy in the face of loss. She had been in the early stages of writing her novel, Horse, but naturally that was set aside for some time as she grappled with all that was involved, both practically and emotionally, in transitioning their small family from four people to three. Under this enormous burden there was simply no time to grieve.
Three years later Brooks arrived on Flinders Island, on her own, to reflect on what they'd had, what she'd lost, and what it means to mourn a loved one.
The contrast between those frantic, frustrating months in the US following Tony's passing, and the quiet, slow solitude of Flinders Island, is stark. As one of my favourite authors, I'm glad Brooks was able to gift herself the space and time to do what she needed to do, and that we readers now have the privilege of being able to read this beautiful memoir.
April 27, 2025
All the stars - as eloquent and pure as a book on navigating grief can be. Highly recommend.
July 27, 2025
A walk through grief after the death of her husband, see in parallel stories. Brooks grappling with her loss a few years after the death of her husband on an isolated hut in Flinders Island; Brooks in Martha’s Vineyard stumbling through the time immediately after her husband’s death.
This was nostalgic but spare and refreshing. A look back at her relationship as it began and flourished across a shared career and in cities across the world.
She shares insights into her journey as a writer, and these two mandates stood out to me:
This was nostalgic but spare and refreshing. A look back at her relationship as it began and flourished across a shared career and in cities across the world.
She shares insights into her journey as a writer, and these two mandates stood out to me:
“There’s one thing you must be able to do as a novelist. And that is understand how your characters explain their own actions to themselves.”
And
”Your task as a novelist is to keep pushing your protagonists head under water throughout the narrative. But when you get to the end you must decide: will you sink them? Or let them swim?”
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