'When your daughter dies, how do you navigate living?
'One morning, Lucy Halligan lay on her bed with her cat and went to sleep. Soon after, her heart stopped. But her mother, writer Marion Halligan, forced hers to keep beating.
'More joy than sorrow, this profoundly moving memoir celebrates Lucy’s life, weaving together everyday details and treasured events.
'Words for Lucy sees Marion at the peak of her writing powers, telling the story of a mother surviving the aftershocks of death and finding the space to live.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Personal archives are useful writing fodder, but grief memoirs that incorporate objects (“material grief memoirs”) also act as grief archives. In this essay, I posit that material grief memoirs are imaginative archives, which bring artifacts of loss into conversation. I acknowledge arguments against theoretical archives but ultimately assert the material grief memoir form’s generative potential. I examine three grief memoirs: The Museum of Words (2017) by Georgia Blain, Words for Lucy (2022) by Marion Halligan, and Small (2021) by Claire Lynch, to argue that reading grief memoir as grief archive facilitates deeper discussions on convergences of identity, loss, and materiality.' (Publication abstract)
'Personal archives are useful writing fodder, but grief memoirs that incorporate objects (“material grief memoirs”) also act as grief archives. In this essay, I posit that material grief memoirs are imaginative archives, which bring artifacts of loss into conversation. I acknowledge arguments against theoretical archives but ultimately assert the material grief memoir form’s generative potential. I examine three grief memoirs: The Museum of Words (2017) by Georgia Blain, Words for Lucy (2022) by Marion Halligan, and Small (2021) by Claire Lynch, to argue that reading grief memoir as grief archive facilitates deeper discussions on convergences of identity, loss, and materiality.' (Publication abstract)
