What comes next and how to like it A memoir

Abigail Thomas

Book - 2015

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BIOGRAPHY/Thomas, Abigail
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Subjects
Published
New York : Scribner 2015.
Language
English
Main Author
Abigail Thomas (author)
Edition
First Scribner hardcover edition
Physical Description
224 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN
9781476785059
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

TWO PAGES into her third memoir, "What Comes Next and How to Like It," Abigail Thomas tells us that "I don't know anyone's story except my own and I don't even know that." That coy little torque of paradox, the would-be wisdom and confessional pride of the serial memoirist, is a constant throughout this short book, much more so than in its predecessors. In Thomas's first memoir, "Safekeeping," she wrote of being married three times, of having four children, of the death of her father and her second ex-husband, and about meeting her third husband, Rich. In "A Three Dog Life," a moving encounter with grief, we learned about the traffic accident that left the unfortunate Rich brain damaged and cared for in a nursing home. We learned that Thomas had an apartment in Manhattan, a house in Woodstock and, eventually, three dogs. Disappointingly, in spite of her intimate, confiding air, we do not learn where this kind of money came from. Now Thomas tells us that "I call myself a writer, but I am stone lazy," and, indeed, she whiles away page after page with fiddling matters of daily existence. "Nothing is wasted when you are a writer," she says, and writes about thinking about picking an apple, about where her dogs sleep, about finding a snail. She offers thoughts on beds, a broken dishwasher and on the nature of forgiveness. ("What is forgiveness anyway? It seems to me the only person you can forgive is yourself.") She tells us about the time she found some old marshmallows, made macaroni and cheese, and tried to stop smoking. She tells us about her dreams and that people love her writing. She confesses that when she worked for a publishing house, she rejected manuscripts of possible promise because she didn't feel like reading them all the way through. She lists five famous people whose names she always forgets and describes her method of painting, including how to paint a moon: "All I want is a big round moon because it's the best I can do, and because it does not involve knowing how to paint, only how to hold a stick still while the paint drips off, and because I love the way it looks." THOMAS SWAPS THAT faux-naif tone on occasion for one of anger or fear. Amid the random observations, three painful matters gain precedence. The first is Thomas's decades-long friendship with a man named Chuck and its near extinction by her discovery that he has had an affair with her youngest daughter, Catherine. It's a slap in the face as she sees it, a galling affront, and one from which her relationship with Chuck (which, characteristically, she sees as connecting herself with herself) only slowly recovers. The second issue is Catherine's bout with an aggressive cancer and subsequent chemotherapy and radiation. Here, one feels genuine sympathy for Catherine - and, at last, her mother. The third and overarching matter of concern is death itself. Thomas, in her 70s, is stunned by the idea that the world will go on without her and that her own children, too, will grow old and die. It's monstrous. "I hate chronological order," she says, reducing life to just that: "The thought that this happened and then this happened and then this and this and this, the relentless march of event and emotion tied together simply because day follows day and turns into week following week becoming months and years reinforces the fact that the only logical ending for chronological order is death." This may be how she actually sees things, or, more likely, it is merely a writerly conceit, but, either way, it is a paltry species of nihilism. She tells us about the times she found some old marshmallows, made macaroni and cheese, and tried to stop smoking. KATHERINE A. POWERS received the 2013 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle and is the editor of "Suitable Accommodations : The Letters of J.F. Powers, 1942-1963."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 5, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review

In astutely titled short chapters, from a quarter-page to a few pages, best-selling author Thomas (Safe Keeping, 2000; A Three Dog Life, 2006) walks readers with her through some heady times, including love affairs, friendships, pets, cancer, and death. She intersperses her recollections with discussions of her artwork (paint on glass) and how the colors and the results surprise her. So, too, do life's vicissitudes, and her brief summations are smoky with thought though keenly observed. Through her pointed stories, she grows older, as do her children; grandchildren appear and then also grow. Thomas amiably slows down a bit, detailing her naps, her drinking, her fears, but also her joys: the trees she sees and paints, a child's exclamation, and, always, her loving dogs. As she ages, always nearby to bounce ideas off of is her friend, Chuck; their longtime love for each other sustains them, even as Thomas' own behavior bewilders her (Just the simple desire to be not living one's life). This episodic memoir is full of love and life. Readers will identify with the feelings and the people even as they realize how different they are, how wondrous.--Kinney, Eloise Copyright 2015 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review

Baby boomers seeking a guidebook for the terrain ahead will enjoy novelist/memoirist (A Three Dog Life) Thomas’s next installment in her chronicles of navigating the frequently treacherous course of life once middle age is a condition and no longer a joke on a birthday card. In episodic musings, Thomas visits, among other topics, friendship, creativity, and the importance of dogs in life but never veers far from her central point: something big is coming for all of us and we had better learn to deal with it. The author’s revelations of the messier detours of her own life—including a deep betrayal by a friend, the illness of her daughter, maladies and deaths of friends, and reliance upon alcohol—illuminate the need for preparedness and comfort in the face of the mortality we’re all facing. In short, often epigrammatic, entries, Thomas reports back to her traveling companions on the pitfalls that lie ahead but more importantly on the steps we can all take to help one another along the way. VERDICT It’s a credit to Thomas’s detailed powers of observation and calm reportage that when she suggests that we all hold hands and “rush into the surf together,” the future seems a less daunting destination. [See Prepub Alert, 9/22/14.] —Thérêse Purcell Nielsen, Huntington P.L., NY (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A former book editor and memoirist's account of the remarkable 35-year friendship that sustained her through the trials and tribulations of adult life. Thomas (Thinking About Memoir, 2008, etc.) met her best friend, Chuck, when both were working for a New York publisher. They never saw each other outside of the office, where they were "in each other's pockets" and sometimes mistaken for a couple at work parties. Eventually, Thomas moved on to another job and remarried while Chuck started a family of his ownyet they were never out of touch. Then Chuck had an affair with Thomas' oldest daughter, Catherine, who had found her way into the publishing world after college. The event rocked Thomas' world, as well as her friendship with Chuck, because it was "something done behind [her] back." Not long after that, Thomas' husband suffered from traumatic brain injuries that would transform him into a bedridden invalid for the rest of his life. Thomas attempted to sever contact with Chuck, but in the end, he would become a steadying presence in her now upended life. With her best friendand several good dogs by her sideThomas went on to witness the births of grandchildren, the death of her husband, Catherine's cancer diagnosis, the signs of her own aging, and Chuck's struggle with cirrhosis and hepatitis C. These events challenged Thomas to celebrate or rediscover the beauty of life through reflection or her paint-on-glass artwork, just as it challenged her to push beyond the alcoholism that "alleviate[d] the pain or allowed [her] to feel it." More aware than ever of the fragility of existence, Thomas eventually learned that the one thing that had allowed her to survive was love, which, in its roominess, "allow[ed] for betrayal and loss and dread," feelings that inevitably come with being alive. A moving and eloquent memoir. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.