Perdita - by Dylan Riley (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Memoir of the author's marriage to an Italian woman and of bereavement after losing her to cancer"--

Book Synopsis

An intense literary memoir of love and grief

"Our marriage was, from any conventional point of view, wildly implausible; and you, my dear son, are the miraculous product of this beautiful, rather crazy, and all too brief love affair." When Dylan Riley received the devastating news that his wife, Emanuela, had cancer, he turned to writing to express the anguish and disarray brought by her worsening symptoms and then her passing. Perdita, composed for their teenage son, Eamon, is the result of this attempt to represent loss. It is at once a portrait of youth, a lyrical memoir of a marriage, and a raw and moving account of bereavement.

Riley describes cancer, Perdita's central antagonist, as a pitiless opponent, draining hope of its power and reducing it to self-delusion. Its course forces a progressive foreshortening of time. Next year might be terrible, but there can be a few good months now; tomorrow will likely be bad, but let's focus on today.

In this memoir, the disease provokes a broader set of reflections on the openness, contingency, and pain of the human condition, a status defined by the context of mortality, both our own and that of those we love.

Review Quotes

"A poignant memoir of the felicitous and infelicitous contingencies that shape the course of a life, Perdita testifies to the irreducible uniqueness of each human being, and the power of writing to ensure the survival of the universe they once were."
--Ryan Ruby, author of The Zero and the One

"Eloquent and vivid reflections on the work of mourning."
--Lynne Segal, author of Lean on Me: A Politics of Radical Care

"Excavates the experience of loss in all its terrible solitude and intimacy."
--Benjamin Kunkel, author of Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis

"In telling the story of learning to love and then learning to grieve, Riley traces a deep human connection that is rare in our fragmented world."
--Sarah Jaffe, author of From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire

"Through rich description...and palpable emotion ... Riley succeeds in his goal of capturing the precise character of his marriage for Eamon's benefit. It's an intimate and indelible elegy."
--Publishers Weekly

"Precision is what makes Perdita, throughout its 192 pages, both so endearing and so heartbreaking ... a text of great generosity and warmth."
--Lamorna Ash, Telegraph

About the Author

Dylan Riley was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1971 and teaches sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His other books are Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present and The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe.