I wish I
had thought to spend my 60th birthday having as much fun as author
Ann Hood has. By the time she turns 60 this December 9, she will have
celebrated with 60 cupcakes with 60 different book groups.
Right after it was published, I discovered
Ann Hood’s non-fiction memoir Comfort (2008). I read the advance review with
interest. Having lost a child myself, I was related to her raw expressions of
grief after losing her five-year old daughter in 2002. It was an absolutely
hell-ridden journey of only 36 hours, when Grace died of an unthinkably
virulent and destructive strep infection. It was a horror that some parents have to
endure – the unimaginable sojourn of a losing a child.
Ann Hood and her husband returned
from the hospital to tell their living older son, Grace’s older brother Sam,
that his sister had died. So unexpectedly and so quickly.
Ann Hood’s raw grief was that which only
a parent can feel. The mind-fog. The confusion. The nightmarish realization
that life has sped up but left you behind with a child’s clothing left on a
hook, her toys left on a shelf, desolate comforters and pillows left on a bed.
Ann Hood and other parents never
really recover from the gut-wrenching grief of losing a child. But, they do
learn to live again. Deeply, richly, and happily. Comfort speaks to the journey
back to life that Ann Hood lived.
Besides reading a few non-fiction
essays in books that were edited by Ann Hood, or those that she was included
in, I had little experience with her writing before or after 2008. A few years ago, however, my husband gave me
Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting in 2013, a compilation of essay written by
women who knit (and who happen to write, too.) When her book, Knitting Pearls: Writers
Writing about Knitting (2016) hit the library shelf earlier this year, I was
one of the first to grab it.
After Grace died in 2002, Ann Hood could
not write for several years. Consumed with grief, she sought solace in the
comfort of knitting. Two years later, however, The Knitting Circle was
published with a familiar theme: a woman who has lost her only child suddenly.
In the book, mother Mary Baxter not only learns knitting technique, but that a
caring and loving camaraderie can be found in a group of knitters.
Ann Hood did not begin to write
about grief only after her daughter Grace died, however. One of her earlier
novels, (Ruby, 1998) is the story of a woman who is widowed early in her
marriage. Yet, it is not until her own father’s struggles with cancer in the
late 1990s does Ann face death head on in her non-fiction memoir, Do Not Go
Gentle.
And what does this have to do with
60th birthday parties, cupcakes, and celebration?
Ann’s latest novel, The Book That
Matters Most, was published in past August. Her publisher challenged her to
visit 60 book groups before her 60th birthday which is coming up on
December 9. On her Facebook page, Ann invited herself to any book group –
whether it be on Skype or in person. Because Ann lives in Providence, Rhode
Island, the staff book group at our library was the perfect venue. I invited
Ann and the only stipulation for her visit was that we all read her most recent
book and sing happy birthday with a candle and cupcake.
On Friday, September 30, nearly 20
of our staff wished Ann a happy 60th birthday after she shared her
stories of writing with us. While she began with questions about The Book That
Matters Most, she quickly answered questions about her writing history, writing
style, and writing techniques. We learned that Ann has written a young adult
novel, biographies for children, and that she teaches writing in an online
course through the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. In addition, she has
taught in writing programs in New York and Vermont.
Ann began her published writing
history when she finished her first novel (Off the Coast of Maine, 1983). She was a flight attendant at the time,
attending graduate school, and spending her furloughs feverishly writing the
book that would begin her career as a published writer. At the time, she was
overcoming the loss of her older brother, Skip, who had died unexpectedly in an
accident. When the book was finally published in 1987, Ann had already learned
that her person experience in three short stories, was really meant to be a novel.
Shortly after Ann’s career as a
flight attendant ended with layoffs due to a TWA strikes, she began writing
full time and in earnest. Her second book was followed by a third and within a
decade, she had published at least seven novels.
Ann’s recent novels (The Red Thread,
2010; The Obituary Writer, 2013; and The Italian Wife, 2014) join the personal
essays she has contributed to compilations. These appear in Dumped: Stories of
Women Unfriending Women; Sorrow’s Company: Writers on Loss & Grief; Drinking
Diaries: Women Serve Their Stories Straight Up; Every Father’s Daughters: 24
Women Writers Remember Their Fathers; Cook and Stealing; and Because I Love
Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond.
In the essay “Little Audrey” (in
Cooking and Stealing, 2004), Ann writes of her personal pilgrimages of helping
heal her father of cancer. In “Not the
Daughter She Had in Mind” (in Because I Love Her, 2009), Ann looks back on the
relationship she had with her mother.
“How I Lost Her” (in Dumped, 2015), Ann shares her sadness of a
friendship ended with one of her oldest and dearest friends.
I find Ann’s essays particularly
poignant and relevant to my own life. She has found both comfort and joy in
life lost and in life found.
