A Widow’s Story

In 2008 Joyce Carol Oates lost her longtime husband Raymond J. Smith. The terrible grief she was plunged into as a result is recounted in her memoir, A Widow's Story, in which she narrates her minute-by-minute emotional fluctuations, along with her sudden and horrible legal responsibilities, and the doubts surrounding whether Smith—who died quickly and unexpectedly—could have been saved. Yet this isn't merely a memoir about bereavement; it is, most importantly, a reflection on love and its survival beyond the human body. What emerges from Oates' telling is a sense of the day-to-day life she and her husband shared together: reading in the same room, jogging, and attending dinner parties in the Princeton community. Oates tenderly remembers their literary partnership—they founded the Ontario Review together—while wondering whether she kept a secret part of herself from her husband because he didn't read her work. Though at times the memoir is weighed down by redundancies, Oates keeps the narrative varied with a unique formal combination of vignettes and letter excerpts. Ultimately, A Widow's Story offers a finely wrought portrait of death's intrusion into a singular marriage.