A Widow's Story: A Memoir

Joyce Carol Oates

Feb 2011 · HarperAudio · Narrated by Ellen Parker

About this audiobook

Unlike anything Joyce Carol Oates has written before, A Widow’s Story is the universally acclaimed author’s poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of Raymond Smith, her husband of forty-six years, and its wrenching, surprising aftermath. A recent recipient of National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, Oates, whose novels (Blonde, The Gravedigger’s Daughter, Little Bird of Heaven, etc.) rank among the very finest in contemporary American fiction, offers an achingly personal story of love and loss. A Widow’s Story is a literary memoir on a par with The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and Calvin Trillin’s About Alice.

Ratings and reviews

A Truly Honest Book Unlike any other follows the Grief Journey Joyce Found herself on with the tragic loss of her husband Ray - Joyce' initial huge anxiety & vulnerability her public/private personas suffering the impact of loss - "Suffer Joyce Ray was worth it" through to Joyce' eventual rebellion against Grief finding her purpose & resolve reducing her medication admiring her own tenacity "You Kept Yourself Alive" Wonderfully narrated by Ellen Parker letting it be so very personal & poignant.

About the author

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.