Compiling a Grief Syllabus

Currently mourning: the ability to sleep

Last time: The Most Inspiring Things I’ve Digested This Week

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

“The deep sea is a haunted house: a place in which things that ought not to exist move about in the darkness.” —Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

Oh, I have been distracted. Unfocused, daydreamy, anxious. Sending my kid (and myself) to school with clothes inside out and forgetful as I stand in the sliver of refrigerator light, unsure what I needed in the first place.

But I’m pretty sure this happens to me at regular intervals. Instead of seasonal allergies, I get seasonal distraction.

Now would be a good time to let you know that writing news is coming (medium-sized news at least), updates I’ll share at first behind a paywall, and if you wanted to subscribe and support the writing going on over here, I’d appreciate it more than I can express in words (though I’ll try because I’m a writer).

I’m moving my books around at home and realized that there are a lot of books with ghosts (kinda on purpose) and a lot of books filled grief (not always on purpose). I didn’t mean to start creating a Grief Syllabus, really a reading list of books with ghosts and mourning, but here we are.

And my list is just getting started. I’m hoping with suggestions in the comments, I can update this list even more.

Note: I’m a Bookshop.org affiliate and may earn a small commission if you purchase through my book links.

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

Ghosts and Grief: An Ongoing Mourning Pages Reading List

This is an incomplete list of books that came to mind when I immediately thought about mourning, not necessarily how-to manuals (there are many of those out there), but books that especially confront the act of mourning either in fiction of non-fiction.

• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

• Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom

• Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden

• The Unwritten Book: An Investigation by Samantha Hunt

• Lost & Found : Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness by Kathryn Schulz

• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

What other books about mourning come to mind for you? Bonus points for ghosts, both literal and figurative.