Review: Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt

Overview:

 

When Roger's daughter, Amy—a gifted doctor, mother, and wife—collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition at age thirty-eight, Roger and his wife, Ginny, leave their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren: six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies.

Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny—Boppo and Mimi to the kids—quickly reaccustom themselves to the world of small children: bedtime stories, talking toys, play-dates, nonstop questions, and nonsequential thought. Though reeling from Amy's death, they carry on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tenderhearted children through the pains and confusions of grief. As he marvels at the strength of his son-in-law and the tenacity and skill of his wife, Roger attends each day to "the one household duty I have mastered"—preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child's liking.

Luminous, precise, and utterly unsentimental, Making Toast is both a tribute to the singular Amy and a brave exploration of the human capacity to move through and live with grief.  

 

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Review:

 

Making Toast reads as a meditation on Rosenblatt's life after the sudden loss of his daughter, and subsequent move to the home his daughter and her family shared. I was anticipating more of a chronicle, maybe more of a tear-jerker.  As a wife and new mother, I feared Rosenblatt's experience would hit a soft spot. A baby and two other young children left without a mother? Unconscionable. Maybe I expected to learn how you get over something like this. Or to discover the secret of overcoming loss; how life moves forward. At the very least, I expected the simple act of breakfast: making toast, to anchor the tour through grief.  What the book captures is life the first year 'after Amy.'

 

 

At times Making Toast reads as diary entries; at other times, as writing exercises. There is an emotional distancing between the situation and Rosenblatt himself. Maybe it's a coping mechanism, but I found it a bit cold. The recurring mention of godless-ness in both Amy's service and the family's life was more than a life off-putting. Without the context that it made the loss harder to bear, or created anger, there was no purpose to noting the point. Mentioning the point more than once suggests a hidden agenda. 

I imagine there may stronger chronicles of grief.