Bough Down
by Karen Green
Buy on AmazonA book of dualities, probing the small spaces between lucidity and madness, desire and ambivalence, the living and the absent. Both an evocation of her love for her husband David Foster Wallace and an act of defiance in the face of devastating loss, Bough Down is a lapidary, keenly observed and composed work, awash with the honesty of an open heart.
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"“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."
NPR Books We Love — 2013 · apps.npr.org