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Summary
Summary
Six marriages, six heartbreaks, one shared beginning.
In her forties - a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role - Becky Aikman struggled to make sense of her place in an altered world. In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, she explores surprising new discoveries about how people experience grief and transcend loss and, following her own remarriage, forms a group with five other young widows to test these unconventional ideas. Together, these friends summon the humor, resilience, and striving spirit essential for anyone overcoming adversity.
Meet the Saturday Night Widows: ringleader Becky, an unsentimental journalist who lost her husband to cancer; Tara, a polished mother of two, whose husband died in the throes of alcoholism after she filed for divorce; Denise, a widow of just five months, now struggling to get by; Marcia, a hard-driving corporate lawyer; Dawn, an alluring self-made entrepreneur whose husband was killed in a sporting accident, leaving two small children behind; and Lesley, a housewife who returned home one day to find that her husband had committed suicide.
The women meet once a month, and over the course of a year, they strike out on ever more far-flung adventures, learning to live past the worst thing they thought could happen. They share emotional peaks and valleys - dating, parenting, moving, finding meaningful work, and reinventing themselves - while turning traditional thinking about loss and recovery upside down. Through it all runs the story of Aikman's own journey through grief and her love affair with a man who tempts her to marry again. In a transporting story of what friends can achieve when they hold each other up, "Saturday Night Widows" is a rare book that will make you laugh, think, and remind yourself that despite the utter unpredictability and occasional tragedy of life, it is also precious, fragile, and often more joyous than we recognize.
Author Notes
A graduate of the School of Journalism at Columbia University, Becky Aikman was a writer and editor for Business Week and a reporter for Newsday . She lives in New York City.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Hoping to shatter the myth of the widow as a black-clad elderly lady of perpetual sorrows, New York Newsday reporter Aikman resolved to organize her own group of "renegade widows" and record their spirited monthly meetings as an unscientific grief study framed within her cautious memoir of having lost her own husband. Widowed in her late 40s when her husband (older by 16 years) died after a long bout with cancer, Aikman rejected the defeatist litany of the usual widows' support group, made up of much older women and dictated by the traditional five stages of grief codified by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, which Aikman dismisses, with some scientific basis, as "a bunch of hooey." The group of five women she gathered were closer to her age, and despite being at different points in their widowhood, remarkably like Aikman, all apparently white, educated, attractive, upper middle-class women with jobs and nice homes or apartments in the New York metropolitan area. Occasionally they met at a restaurant or art gallery, spent a weekend at a spa, shopped for lingerie, and eventually took a daring trip together to Morocco. All the women had complicated stories of their husbands' death, feelings of guilt and insecurity, and more or less healthy libidos. Indeed, dating and finding new partners prove the leitmotif, especially for the author, who had remarried a year before she even organized the group. As a result, the work feels stifled and lacking emotional drive, resulting in a kind of detached, academic tome. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
How to cope with tragedy with the help of good friends. "I didn't seem to fit anyone's definition of a proper widow, least of all my own," writes former Newsday writer Aikman, "you know, the Ingmar Bergman version, gloomy, pathetic, an all-around, ongoing downer." Five years after her husband died after a long bout with cancer, the author realized she wasn't ready to quit living just yet and surmised that there must be others just like her. She gathered together five other women, all unknown to each other, and they formed a support group--not just to move past their grief, but hopefully, on to new and richly fulfilling lives. In this debut memoir, Aikman brings together the sad yet optimistic stories of these women, who were widowed at far too early an age. Faced with paying mortgages on their own, raising small children or not having someone to eat dinner with, these women managed to move beyond the initial shock and were ready to take new steps toward a different way of being. Meeting once a month for a year, "on Saturday night, the most treacherous shoal for new widows, where untold spirits have sunk into gloom," the group tried cooking together, going to an art museum, a day at a spa and other activities. Engaging and entertaining but not maudlin, Aikman shows a side of life that many readers probably don't think about. A compassionate narrative about how one group of friends helped each other thrive after the deaths of their spouses.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Former Newsday reporter Aikman lost her husband to cancer while still in her forties. After several discouraging experiences in bereavement support groups, she assembled her own collection of young widowed women like herself, who sought to honor their husbands' memories and rebuild their lives. It was an eclectic ensemble: Tara, a well-put-together mother of two whose husband died of alcoholism after she filed for divorce; Marcia, a corporate lawyer with a crooked smile and a hidden wit; contemplative Denise, who found solace in yoga; sensuous self-made entrepreneur Dawn; and Lesley, a homemaker who returned home one day to find that her husband had taken his life. The women met once a month, sharing meals, visiting museums, and even traveling to Morocco in an adventure that is one of the highlights of the book. Laughter and tears abounded as they comforted and confided in one another. Aikman tells this life-affirming tale with compassion and candor, revealing her own emotional journey and eventual romance with a man who has her considering marriage again.--Block, Allison Copyright 2010 Booklist