The Grief of Others (Wheeler Large Print) - Hardcover

Leah Hager Cohen is the author of four nonfiction books, including Train Go Sorry and Glass, Paper, Beans, and three novels, most recently House Lights. Among the honors her books have received are selection as a New York Times Notable Book (four times); inclusion in the American Library Association's Ten Best Books of the Year; and selection as a Book Sense 76 pick. She is frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. Pam Ward has had many incarnations, including private detective, classical musician, television talk-show host, and actress, having performed in dinner theater, summer stock, and Off-Broadway, as well as in commercials, radio, and film. But she found her true calling reading books for the blind and physically handicapped for the Library of Congress Talking Books program, for which she received the prestigious Alexander Scourby Award from the American Foundation for the Blind. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner, her many audiobooks include Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich, Breaking Free by Lauraine Snelling, The Second Journey by Joan Anderson, and Lion in the White House by Aida D. Donald. She now records from her studio amidst the beauty of the Southern Oregon mountains.

"Cohen creates gorgeous, uncommon descriptions that sound like grace notes on her pages. . . . There's pain in reading this book, but there's another thread running through it, too, gleaming with all the vibrancy of Cohen's prose: hope."
-The Washington Post

"Leah Hager Cohen is one of our foremost chroniclers of the mundane complexities, nuanced tragedies and unexpected tendernesses of human connection. . . . For all its deep-seated sorrows, this is a hopeful book, a series of striking vignettes illuminating the humanity of these fully realized characters."
-The New York Times Book Review

"In this subtle portrait of family life she shows the maddening arithmetic of marriage, the useless attempts to balance the equation. As Ricky and John's kids start to come unglued themselves, we see how the grief of others is contagious. . . . Ms. Cohen's painstaking excavation pays off, especially as Ricky and John decide to rebuild."
-The New York Times

"Part of the novel's pathos lies in its ability to offer its characters a level of perceptive acuity and sympathetic attention they cannot offer one another ... The book's brilliance lies in moments like this one, these shards of devastating insight. Cohen's empathy is sure-footed and seemingly boundless; her writing gifts its characters with glints of ordinary human radiance. It is the possibility of this glinting that ultimately becomes Cohen's most powerful gift to us, her readers, as well."
-San Francisco Chronicle

"Cohen's stunning writing and ruthless, beautiful magnification of soul- crushing sorrow that threatens the Ryries' day-to-day family life mesmerizes, wounds, and possibly even heals her readers. Her courageous novel (she knows of what she writes) is to be savored."
-Library Journal

" --Various

[Audio Review] Perhaps the only thing that can help one endure grief is the understanding that the feeling may one day lessen in intensity, its edges smoothing with time. While the characters in this audiobook are far from that awareness, caught as they are in the torment of having lost loved ones, the listener has Pam Ward s performance to shine a soft light. Ward is consistently gentle throughout the painful turns of this novel, her voice empathetic and appropriately wistful. Her skilled phrasing spans time shifts and voices that range from those of toddlers to adults with nary a hesitation. The only time the listener may be pulled from this engrossing novel is to marvel at its affecting writing. Altogether, this is a remarkable audiobook. ----AudioFile Earphones Award Winner