Sian Lile-Pastore's Reviews > The Guardians: An Elegy for a Friend

i thought this was so beautifully written.
it's about the death of Harris, a friend of the author, and even though it's a slight book, it also covers depression, intimacy, suicide, belonging, writing and 9/11.

it's a sad book about losing a friend 'It doesn't sound like much when I say my friend died. He wasn't my father or my son or my husband.'

I like how Manguso writes about grief:
'I can't measure my grief and I can't show anyone what color it is. I can offer testimony that others can reject or accept on faith, but my grief is always just my grief, unobservable by anyone but me, and then imperfectly. And maybe it isn't even grief anymore; maybe it's envy of people who aren't grieving, or shame that my grief is lasting so long when I'm not even part of Harris's family.'
The back of my proof copy compares it to Joan Didion's 'Year of Magical Thinking', which is kind of obvious but not far off - it has a similar writing style, but also felt much more raw.