After the Eclipse: A Memoir
Jun 2020 · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5.0star
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Ebook
386
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About this ebook
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. "A heartfelt memoir and a suspenseful story" of a murdered mother (Gabourey Sidibe, Book of the Month Club).
When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse; she took it as a good omen for her and her mother, Crystal. But that moment of darkness foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine. It took twelve years to find the killer. In that time, Sarah rebuilt her life amid abandonment, police interrogations, and the exacting toll of trauma. She dreamed of a trial, but when the day came, it brought no closure. It was not her mother's death she wanted to understand, but her life. She began her own investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, deep into the darkness of a small American town. "Pull[ing] the reader swiftly along on parallel tracks of mystery and elegy" in After the Eclipse, "Perry succeeds in restoring her mother's humanity and her own" ( The New York Times Book Review).
"Raw and perfect . . . After the Eclipse [has] an eerie, heartbreaking power that it shares with the very best of true crime." —Laura Miller, Slate
"A gut punch . . . A heartbreaking yet hopeful testament to human resilience." —Samantha Irby, Marie Claire
"With clear, powerful prose, Perry paints a portrait of unconventional motherhood while questioning society's handling of violence against women. Reminiscent of Maggie Nelson's The Red Parts, After the Eclipse tells the very human story at the center of a needless crime."— W Magazine
When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse; she took it as a good omen for her and her mother, Crystal. But that moment of darkness foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine. It took twelve years to find the killer. In that time, Sarah rebuilt her life amid abandonment, police interrogations, and the exacting toll of trauma. She dreamed of a trial, but when the day came, it brought no closure. It was not her mother's death she wanted to understand, but her life. She began her own investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, deep into the darkness of a small American town. "Pull[ing] the reader swiftly along on parallel tracks of mystery and elegy" in After the Eclipse, "Perry succeeds in restoring her mother's humanity and her own" ( The New York Times Book Review).
"Raw and perfect . . . After the Eclipse [has] an eerie, heartbreaking power that it shares with the very best of true crime." —Laura Miller, Slate
"A gut punch . . . A heartbreaking yet hopeful testament to human resilience." —Samantha Irby, Marie Claire
"With clear, powerful prose, Perry paints a portrait of unconventional motherhood while questioning society's handling of violence against women. Reminiscent of Maggie Nelson's The Red Parts, After the Eclipse tells the very human story at the center of a needless crime."— W Magazine
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5.0
1 review
About the author
Sarah Perrys first novel, After Me Comes the Flood, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Folio Prize, and won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award. She was born in Essex and lives in Norwich, England. Sarah Perry holds an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University, where she served as publisher of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art and was a member of the journals nonfiction editorial board. She is the recipient of a Writers Fellowship from the Edward F. Albee Foundation and a Javits Fellowship from the US Department of Education and has attended residencies at Norton Island in Maine and PLAYA in Oregon. Her prose has appeared in Blood & Thunder magazine and Bluestockings Literary Journal.
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