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Comfort: A Journey Through Grief |  | Author: Ann Hood
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Seller: hippo_books
Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 301429
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 192
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 4.7 x 0.9
ISBN: 0393064565
Dewey Decimal Number: 155.937092
EAN: 9780393064568
ASIN: 0393064565
Publication Date: May 17, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A moving and remarkable memoir about the sudden death of a daughter, surviving grief, and learning to love again.
In 2002, Ann Hood's five-year-old daughter Grace died suddenly from a virulent form of strep throat. Stunned and devastated, the family searched for comfort in a time when none seemed possible. Hood—an accomplished novelist—was unable to read or write. She could only reflect on her lost daughter—"the way she looked splashing in the bathtub...the way we sang 'Eight Days a Week.' " One day, a friend suggested she learn to knit. Knitting soothed her and gave her something to do. Eventually, she began to read and write again. A semblance of normalcy returned, but grief, in ever new and different forms, still held the family. What they could not know was that comfort would come, and in surprising ways. Hood traces her descent into grief and reveals how she found comfort and hope again—a journey to recovery that culminates with a newly adopted daughter.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 31
 This book absolutely did not comfort me, au contraire November 17, 2009
readernyc (New York City, NY USA)
Ann Hood had a horrific loss, there is no question about that. She wrote a book that apparently consoled others who lost a child.
Ironically, I try to stay away from anything morbid about children. But I read this book in a few hours. As someone else has said, there is no journey that is obvious, not here. Hood might have balanced out the horrid terrible and wrenching greif, all very real, with things she mentions in passing toward the end: How she teaches other moms of lost children how to knit; how she reaches out to those who know that grief is endless; how she finds such joy in her adopted baby etc etc etc. But she really never does tell us how when going from there to here and back again, she created an amazing life considering her great loss.
I ended up this read feeling more grief than I have in a long time and it wasn't to do with myself but with the repetition of her beautiful daughter's loss. In addition, as another reader has written: Ann Hood had what few of us do: tons of money, tons of friends, a passionate relation to her husband; a darling son. I usually dislike it when anyone lacks compassion for a loss just because the mourner is wealthy in so many respects. But this book was one of the only, maybe the only one, that made me compare how I, as a single mom, on a threadbare budget, with few friends would have survived without all Ann Hood had. It is not jealousy for surely not as my daughter has grown to adulthood not unharmed but very much alive. However if one reads to enter another's world than I suggest this book be revised to show all the great things the author did with her husband and son to heal themselves. Repeating and repeating her loss so many years after the fact maybe true but it doesn't move us, to wit: It moves us down to misery but does not give much time or attention to what is gained.
 Superb memoir!!! August 10, 2009
Lola F. (Sag Harbor, USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This memoir is truly one of the best I've ever read!! It's destined to become a classic!
Comfort "A Journey Through Grief" July 19, 2009
Karen W. Diehl (Littleton, NC)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book didn't fit my situations. The lost of a child wtih the lose of husband of 40 years.
A very honest account May 16, 2009
J. Tellez (Mesa, AZ)
I loved this book. Thank you, Ann Hood, for sharing. Everyone deals with grief differently, and this is how Ms. Hood dealt (among others, which are in the book). Any parent will understand the utter horror of losing a child, and this book makes you want to give your children a tight squeeze, and thank your lucky stars... I simply appreciate being allowed to hear this mother's account of loss, and recovery. It is sad that other reviewers found Ms. Hood to be either annoying or self-indulgent... grief is for US, the ones left behind... so of course it is self-indulgent. This is book is heart wrenching!
How It Feels April 25, 2009
L. J. Baker (San Francisco, CA USA)
Shortly after my son was killed, I read Joan Didion's, "A Year of Magical Thinking". It was amazing in its description of loss that cannot be shared. However, I must say that Ann Hood has expressed the loss of a child better than anyone I have ever had the discussion with about the personal, singular, life altering experience. I have always said that I only know two women who can understand. Both have lost a child. I also knew two women when I was very young, and it was not until I lost my son that it dawned on me that they rarely talked about the child they had lost. I now understand why.
Ann has also captured the difference between men and women and the fact that all losses of children do not drive a separation between them. I admire her courage to speak her feelings and say that more people should read this book to come to a level of understanding and compassion for anyone who has lost a child. It is different than any other loss.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 31
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