The Book on Grieving

When the therapy bills start adding up, here’s something just as good: the top 10 books on grieving to help you through loss. The list, compiled by Leaving the World author Douglas Kennedy, includes works that “did not provide easy bromides or solutions to loss that eschewed the search for ‘closure,’” but deeper ruminations on life and loss. Among the best books: The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion, Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, and Ivan Turgenev’s First Love. Douglas says that James Joyce’s story “The Dead” is “his masterwork from Dubliners, and a brilliant exploration of the unknowingness of even those most intimate to you, and the way we all harbor sadnesses that we rarely show the world.”