Making Toast - by Roger Rosenblatt (Paperback)

About the Book

Though still reeling from their daughter's untimely death, Rosenblatt and his wife Ginny carry on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tenderhearted grandchildren through the pains and confusions of grief.

Book Synopsis

"A painfully beautiful memoir....Written with such restraint as to be both heartbreaking and instructive."

--E. L. Doctorow

A revered, many times honored (George Polk, Peabody, and Emmy Award winner, to name but a few) journalist, novelist, and playwright, Roger Rosenblatt shares the unforgettable story of the tragedy that changed his life and his family. A book that grew out of his popular December 2008 essay in The New Yorker, Making Toast is a moving account of unexpected loss and recovery in the powerful tradition of About Alice and The Year of Magical Thinking. Writer Ann Beattie offers high praise to the acclaimed author of Lapham Rising and Beet for a memoir that is, "written so forthrightly, but so delicately, that you feel you're a part of this family."

From the Back Cover

From O magazine to the New York Times, from authors such as E. L. Doctorow to Ann Beattie, critics and writers across the country have hailed Roger Rosenblatt's Making Toast as an evocative, moving testament to the enduring power of a parent's love and the bonds of family.

When Roger's daughter, Amy--a gifted doctor, mother, and wife--collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition at age thirty-eight, Roger and his wife, Ginny, leave their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren: six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies.

Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny--Boppo and Mimi to the kids--quickly reaccustom themselves to the world of small children: bedtime stories, talking toys, play-dates, nonstop questions, and nonsequential thought. Though reeling from Amy's death, they carry on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tenderhearted children through the pains and confusions of grief. As he marvels at the strength of his son-in-law and the tenacity and skill of his wife, Roger attends each day to "the one household duty I have mastered"--preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child's liking.

Luminous, precise, and utterly unsentimental, Making Toast is both a tribute to the singular Amy and a brave exploration of the human capacity to move through and live with grief.

Review Quotes

"A painfully beautiful memoir telling how grandparents are made over into parents, how people die out of order, how time goes backwards. Written with such restraint as to be both heartbreaking and instructive." - E.L. Doctorow
"The blow of the improbable: a highly achieved daughter who is the mother of very young children is tragically struck down in her radiant prime. Husband, children, and grandparents are bereft, and what can come of such a maelstrom of grief? MAKING TOAST, Roger Rosenblatt's piercing account of broken hearts, records how love, hurt, and responsibility can, through antic wit and tenderness, turn a shattered household into a luminous new-made family." - Cynthia Ozick
"[A] piercing account of broken hearts [that] records how love, hurt, and responsibility can, through antic wit and tenderness, turn a shattered household into a luminous new-made family." - Cynthia Ozick
Roger Rosenblatt means, I believe, to teach patience, love, a fondness for the quotidian, and a deftness for saving the lost moment--when faced with lacerating loss. These are brilliant lessons, fiercely-learned. But Rosenblatt comes to them and to us--suitably--with immense humility. - Richard Ford
"Written so forthrightly, but so delicately, that you feel you're a part of this family. Rosenblatt's writing turns a story that might be too uncomfortable to read, or too sentimental, in the direction of simple facts that required sophisticated, but instinctual, responses. How lucky some of us are to see clearly what needs to be done, even in the saddest, most life-altering circumstances. - Ann Beattie
"Written so forthrightly, but so delicately, that you feel you're a part of this family... How lucky some of us are to see clearly what needs to be done, even in the saddest, most life-altering circumstances." - Ann Beattie
"There are circumstances in which prose is poetry, and the unornamented candor of Rosenblatt's writing slowly attains to a sober sort of lyricism...This is more than just a moving book. It is also a useful book....[Rosenblatt's] toast is buttered with wisdom. " - Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic
"Rosenblatt avoids the sentimentality that might have weighed down [Making Toast]; he writes with humor and an engagement with life that makes the occasional flashes of grief all the more telling. The result is a beautiful account of human loss, measured by the steady effort to fill in the void. - Publishers Weekly
"[MAKING TOAST] is about coping with grief, caring for children and creating an ad hoc family for as long as this particular configuration is required, but mostly it's a textbook on what constitutes perfect writing and how to be a class act." - Carolyn See, The Washington Post
"Rosenblatt...sets a perfect tone and finds the right words to describe how his family is coming with their grief... It may seem odd to call a book about such a tragic event charming, but it is. There is indeed life-after death, and Rosenblatt proves that without a doubt." - USA Today
"A gem of a memoir, deceptively simple in its proportions, but in truth: sad, funny, brave and luminous. . . . Without self-pity or sanctimony, the author reminds us in this rare and generous book that there is no remedy for death. The way to live, he concludes, is 'to value the passing time"; the best we can do is to pay attention and to love each other well.'" - Los Angeles Times
"It may seem odd to call a book about such a tragic event charming, but it is. There is indeed life after death, and Rosenblatt proves that without a doubt." - USA Today
"A beautiful account of human loss, measured by the steady effort to fill in the void. - Publishers Weekly
"Hauntingly lovely." - Christian Science Monitor