40 weeks is the story told in journal style about a young mother, Anna, processing and healing from the loss of her first child to a miscarriage as she plans and anticipates the coming of her second. Touching also on themes of marriage, aging, and celebrating family and friends throughout the life cycle.
40 weeks is a lovely, lovely read with many wonderful gems of wisdom to ponder and explore. How does a young couple support and love each other through loss and heartache? How do we mourn someone we have barely met? How do we best love and support an older person dealing with the limitations of disease and aging? For example the title refers to the title on the journal that "Jack" gives "Anna" knowing that in part, his wife would need to write her way through her grief.
These and others questions are approached with humor and tenderness by the author Paige Beselt a blogger I began exchanging emails with four years ago during my first and her eighth pregnancy ( she and her husband are raising seven and two await her in heaven). The book is well paced, in that important themes regarding life and death are given their due but the storyline continually moves us forward, and tender teasing between the couple offers a light note to balance against the deeper reflections in the book. It was a pleasure to read this book and an honor to review it.
Wow, this sounds like an interesting book, since I have experienced some of it. We lost our first two babies, and had only been married for a few months at the time. So we learned how to grieve and recover together.
ReplyDeleteoh, joy - thank you so much for the review. i'll paste a link here for it on Amazon & kindle :)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=40+weeks+paige+beselt