Bough Down

"“I worry I broke your kneecaps when I cut you down,” writes the artist Karen Green in her debut book. “I keep hearing that sound.” It doesn’t get any easier from there — Bough Down is one of the most heartbreaking books you’re likely to read, but it’s also one of the most beautiful. A meditation on the 2008 suicide of her husband, the novelist David Foster Wallace, Green’s book combines prose poetry with visual art to create something wrenching, powerful and ultimately unclassifiable. It’s not only one of the best books of the year; it’s one of the most stunning books about grief to come out in decades."