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One winter morning in 1991, Joan Wickersham's father shot himself in the head. The father she loved would never have killed himself, and yet he had. His death made a mystery of his entire life. Who was he? Why did he do it? And what was the impact of his death on the people who loved him? Using an index-that most formal and orderly of structures-Wickersham explores this chaotic and incomprehensible reality. Every bit of family history, every encounter with friends, doctors, and other survivors, exposes another facet of elusive truth. Dark, funny, sad, and gripping, at once a philosophical and a deeply personal exploration, The Suicide Index is, finally, a daughter's anguished, loving elegy to her father.
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Reviews
"Honest, brave, incredibly moving, and completely unflinching in its honesty. It's one of those rare books that will haunt you for a long time after you finish it . . . Wickersham's writing is gorgeous, restrained and lyrical at the same time, and there's not an extraneous word or ounce of fat in the book. In trying to comprehend what happened, Wickersham uses the format of an index, in an attempt
Nancy Pearl, KUOW / National Public Radio
"Written in the form of an index, an acknowledgment of Wickersham's inability to frame her father's act in any conventional linear form, this memoir is written in a cool, economical and ultimately piercing style utterly devoid of easy pathos or cliché. Anyone prone to facile dismissal of the memoir as literary high art should be silenced by the perfection of Wickersham's prose and her ability to h
Laura Miller, Salon.com
"[A] remarkable memoir . . . she exposes the whole messy territory of inheritance, of heritage, of what our families leave us, the treacherous trail of genetics and psychology and unhappiness, the legacy of all those generations as they play out in ways that we can see and ways that we will never see across the patterns of our lives . . . true in a way that transcends mere recollection . . . (S)he
David Ulin, Los Angeles Times