Another monthly challenge to myself: read a book, and report on it here (to keep me honest.) These will not be terribly in depth or insightful reviews. Here’s April’s.

I couldn’t face another book of fiction so I went for this memoir, which is something I’ve wanted to read since before it came out.

Oates recounts the death of her husband and probes the aftermath and “adjustment” to becoming a widow. Deeply personal and unvarnished, just the way I like it. I feel hope at our future as a species when someone has the cojones to write about death and grief in an honest way. She captures the humor, pain, and total relentlessness of death.

Advice to the Widow: Do not think that grief is pure, solemn, auster and “elevated” — this is not Mozart’s Requiem Mass. Think instead Spike Jones, those unfunny “classical” musical jokes involving tubas and bassoons.

Think of crude coarse gravel that hurts to walk on. Think of splotched mirrors in public lavatories. Think of towel dispensers when they have broken and there is nothing to wipe your hands on except already-used badly soiled towels.

I feel comfort reading this the way I felt comfort watching Six Feet Under the week after mom died.  I don’t like to think about what I would have done if there weren’t people out there to demystify, to debunk, to examine with honest and creative eyes the epic, ongoing comedy-tragedy that is death.