Book Review: History of a Suicide by Jill Bialosky

Title: History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life
Author: Jill Bialosky
Publisher: Atria
Publication Date: February 15, 2011
Hardcover: 272 pages
ISBN: 978-1439101933
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir

From the Publisher:

“It is so nice to be happy. It always gives me a good feeling to see other people happy. . . . It is so easy to achieve.” —Kim’s journal entry, May 3, 1988

On the night of April 15, 1990, Jill Bialosky’s twenty-one-year-old sister Kim came home from a bar in downtown Cleveland. She argued with her boyfriend on the phone. Then she took her mother’s car keys, went into the garage, closed the garage door. She climbed into the car, turned on the ignition, and fell asleep. Her body was found the next morning by the neighborhood boy her mother hired to cut the grass.

Those are the simple facts, but the act of suicide is anything but simple. For twenty years, Bialosky has lived with the grief, guilt, questions, and confusion unleashed by Kim’s suicide. Now, in a remarkable work of literary nonfiction, she re-creates with unsparing honesty her sister’s inner life, the events and emotions that led her to take her life on this particular night. In doing so, she opens a window on the nature of suicide itself, our own reactions and responses to it—especially the impact a suicide has on those who remain behind.

Combining Kim’s diaries with family history and memoir, drawing on the works of doctors and psychologists as well as writers from Melville and Dickinson to Sylvia Plath and Wallace Stevens, Bialosky gives us a stunning exploration of human fragility and strength. She juxtaposes the story of Kim’s death with the challenges of becoming a mother and her own exuberant experience of raising a son. This is a book that explores all aspects of our familial relationships—between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters—but particularly the tender and enduring bonds between sisters.

History of a Suicide brings a crucial and all too rarely discussed subject out of the shadows, and in doing so gives readers the courage to face their own losses, no matter what those may be. This searing and compassionate work reminds us of the preciousness of life and of the ways in which those we love are inextricably bound to us.

My Review:

History of A Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky is a deeply moving, and at times depressing, look at the complexities of suicide and the lives of all those affected by suicide. In 1990 Bialosky’s older sister Kim committed suicide and through History of A Suicide, Bialosky is trying to come to terms with her sister’s death and in so doing writes about Kim’s life and her own life. One can really look at this book in two ways, as a memoir of a beloved sister and a means toward healing, or as signs that Kim needed help and was not given it. Hindsight is 20-20 so I shall not dwell on that aspect of the book. I was immediately taken into Bialosky’s memoir; her elegy to Kim is beautiful, complex, and at times heart breaking. The reader learns more about Kim through the author as well as through Kim’s journals, making History of A Suicide all the more tender, eloquent, and touching. Bialosky explains what events in her personal life precipitated her to write this beautiful, complex, and heartfelt book. While I have thankfully never suffered the losses Bialosky has, I commend her for being able to share her raw emotions with readers and hope it offers insight and possibly even help to others who have also suffered terrible losses. I would recommend History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life to those who enjoy memoirs as well as to discussion groups.

About the Author:

Jill Bialosky is Executive Editor at W.W. Norton. She has published three collections of poetry, including Intruder (Knopf 10/08) and two novels, most recently The Life Room (Harcourt 2007, Mariner 2008). She lives in New York City with her husband and son.

I received a complimentary of History of a Suicide by Jill Bialosky from Simon & Schuster. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.

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