EBOOK
Companion to an Untold Story
Marcia AldrichSeries: Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction(0)
About
When Marcia Aldrich's friend took his own life at the age of forty-six, they had known each other many years. As part of his preparations for death, he gave her many of his possessions, concealing his purposes in doing so, and when he committed his long-contemplated act, he was alone in a bare apartment.
In Companion to an Untold Story, Aldrich struggles with her own failure to act on her suspicions about her friend's intentions. She pieces together the rough outline of his plan to die and the details of its execution. Yet she acknowledges that she cannot provide a complete narrative of why he killed himself. The story remains private to her friend, and out of that difficulty is born another story- the aftershocks of his suicide and the author's responses to what it set in motion.
This book, modeled on the type of reference book called a "companion," attempts to find a form adequate to the way these two stories criss-cross, tangle, knot, and break. Organized alphabetically, the entries introduce, document, and reflect upon how suicide is so resistant to acceptance that it swallows up other aspects of a person's life. Aldrich finds an indirect approach to her friend's death, assembling letters, objects, and memories to archive an ungrievable loss and create a memorial to a life that does not easily make a claim on public attention. Intimate and austere, clear eyed and tender, this innovative work creates a new form in which to experience grief, remembrance, and reconciliation.
In Companion to an Untold Story, Aldrich struggles with her own failure to act on her suspicions about her friend's intentions. She pieces together the rough outline of his plan to die and the details of its execution. Yet she acknowledges that she cannot provide a complete narrative of why he killed himself. The story remains private to her friend, and out of that difficulty is born another story- the aftershocks of his suicide and the author's responses to what it set in motion.
This book, modeled on the type of reference book called a "companion," attempts to find a form adequate to the way these two stories criss-cross, tangle, knot, and break. Organized alphabetically, the entries introduce, document, and reflect upon how suicide is so resistant to acceptance that it swallows up other aspects of a person's life. Aldrich finds an indirect approach to her friend's death, assembling letters, objects, and memories to archive an ungrievable loss and create a memorial to a life that does not easily make a claim on public attention. Intimate and austere, clear eyed and tender, this innovative work creates a new form in which to experience grief, remembrance, and reconciliation.
Related Subjects
Reviews
"Aldrich is a skilled and savvy writer. . . . [G]ifted writing and a unique premise. . . . Worth Your Time!"
Dan Berkowitz, PsychCentral
"Everybody Else is a valuable work for scholars of American post-war social history or of domesticity, race, and gender. Potter makes full use of her rich source material to provide a unique perspective on the everyday lives of white and African American married couples and families in mid-twentieth-century Chicago, illuminating striking differences between classes, races, and genders."
Susan Orlean, author of Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend
"Marcia Aldrich takes on a project that seems impossible-restoring the life of a friend who gave away all his possessions and killed himself in an empty apartment-and succeeds brilliantly. She pieces together a portrait of the man and her friendship with him from multiple small definitions, each of them precise, lyrical, and daring. The resulting book is an ultimate companion-a friend, a guide, a
Kyoko Mori, author of Yarn: Remembering the Way Home