Unlike anything Joyce Carol Oates has written before, A Widow’s Story is the universally acclaimed author’s poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of Raymond Smith, her husband of forty-six years, and its wrenching, surprising aftermath. A recent recipient of National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, Oates, whose novels ( Blonde , The Gravedigger’s Daughter , Little Bird of Heaven , etc.) rank among the very finest in contemporary American fiction, offers an achingly personal story of love and loss. A Widow’s Story is a literary memoir on a par with The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and Calvin Trillin’s About Alice . “A harrowing tale…” - Detroit News “Oates excellently conveys the disconnect between the inwardly chaotic self and the outwardly functioning person…” - New York Review of Books “Galvanizing...[Oates] recounts this horrific “siege” of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity. . . . Protean and unflinching Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound “pilgrimage” from chaos to coherence. . . . The incomparable, best-selling Oates fascinates readers, and her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking .” - Booklist (starred review) “Widowhood for Oates is a rough, disfiguring condition, one that mocks past happiness. Words are her salvation. “A Widow’s Story” is a brave book that carries its author through the contortions of doubt and despair, on a pilgrimage back to life.” - Charleston Post & Courier “Packed with moments of…frankness…” - Seattle Weekly “In a lesser writer’s hands, the 88 short, disjointed chapters that form A Widow’s Story might congeal into a confused mess. Oates, however, is fully in control - as a writer, heightened emotion is the essential ingredient in her work…As A Widow’s Story progresses, it becomes [Raymond Smith’s] story - both an homage to a decent, intensely private man, and Oates’ way of keeping him in memory as she probes his most closely guarded self…” - Seattle Times “As a writer, heightened emotion is the essential ingredient in [Oates’] work…As A Widow’s Story progresses, it becomes [Raymond Smith’s] story--both an homage to a decent, intensely private man, and Oates’ way of keeping him in memory as she probes his most closely guarded self.” - Seattle Times “This is a brave, haunting, heart-rending book, and it will never let you go.” - Providence Journal “A vivid and urgent memoir…” - Dallas Morning News “Affecting…perfectly pitched prose…” - Richmond Times-Dispatch “Joyce Carol Oates writes like a force of nature, and a story emerges, as if organically, from the physicality of her grief. There are few secrets and no lies, only insights into the inner world of her partner of 50 years.” - Financial Times “A Widow’s Story is unlike anything Oates has written before…a poignant and raw examination of the obsessiveness and self-indulgence of grief…” - Denver Post “A brave, dark but slyly mordant memoir…Oates rages at the dying of the light of her life in this unflinching, generous portrait of the terror of emptiness.” - National Public Radio “[An] intense, raw memoir…[that] gives its readers intimate access to the most abject moments of sorrow, even as it explores the boundary between private and public selves…There is a breathless, antic quality to Oates’ prose here, an abundance of exclamation marks, dashes and repetitive phrases, stylistic markers that mirror the shock of unanticipated loss and its debilitating physical and psychological repercussions. This gives the memoir a kind of lightness and manic energy that make it a (paradoxically) pleasurable reading experience, and readers will come away grateful for having been granted such an intimate glimpse of a long and happy marriage.” - BookPage “Joyce Carol Oates’s new memoir, A Widow’s Story, is a naked confession about the messy relation of art to life…A Widow’s Story, while about life after the death of a husband, is also about the intense inner life of a female genius…” - Elle “As much a portrait of a unique marriage as a chronicle of grief...immensely moving…“ - People “Reads like a rending of garments…” - Cleveland Plain Dealer Critics across the country have raved about Joyce Carol Oates’s ground-breaking memoir A Widow’s Story, lauding its blazing honesty and raw emotion, calling it “immensely moving,” “searing,” “enthralling,” “brave,” “slyly mordant,” and “astonishingly candid.” On a February morning in 2008, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the emergency room of the Princeton Medical Center, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. In less than a week, Ray died from a hospital-acquired virulent infection—and Joyce was suddenly faced with the stunning reality of widowhood. A Widow’s St