Every Last Cuckoo

Grief is a very personal thing. I am often suspicious of authors who offer up grief as art or entertainment even while I am grateful for their efforts to frame such emotion with words. Kate Maloy's book Every Last Cuckoo offers two parts: the life 75 year old Sarah had with her husband and the life she leads after his sudden death. While there are a few examples that scream "first novel" (like her laborious explanation of why two characters don't meet in the driveway upon arriving simultaneously), Maloy writes a wonderful story of what it is to grieve and then to move on.

After Charles dies,Sarah begins to collect an assortment of characters into her life. In some writers' hands this could be too contrived to be believed. Another writer might have made these refugees who begin to fill Sarah's house "wacky", as if to jolly her out of her grief (and I had some fear this would be the case when the Israeli writer moves into a cabin on the property and proceeds to indulge in naked meditation), but Maloy keeps them all believable. First, comes Sarah's own granddaughter, sick of butting heads with her mother. Lottie adds a few of her fellow 17 year olds, adrift from their own families. Then there's a family displaced by fire, and a domestic violence case (the denouement of that particular story is a stumble on the writer's part, but it's minor enough). There are also tidbits of Sarah's own family who move in and out of the Vermont farmhouse Sarah and Charles have lived in for forty years. Oh, and about that Vermont setting: Maloy wrote this book with a grant from the Vermont Council for the Arts and thus, I assume, on location. This shows. Her depictions of Vermont, especially its nature, were wonderfully evocative. So realistic, I felt I knew the very spots of woods in which she hiked.

Friend Alyssa suggested the book to me. She had been particularly moved by how appealing Maloy makes growing old seem. In a description of their life together, Sarah says, "the grumpy Charles emerged more often than he used to, but, then, so did the grumpy Sarah, So, for that matter, did a broader spirit in each of them, a ferocious joy. There was more to being old than she had ever expected." That's a nice promise and Alyssa kept surprising herself by relating to a 75 year old woman. I love that Charles requests a catered lunch after his memorial service. My life was not haphazard, he wrote [in his will]. Haphazard is, however, precisely what Sarah's life threatens to become after his loss, but for the force of unexpected friendship. The bulk of the story is not about Sarah's loss, but about what she she is forced to make of her life after Charles is gone. Her husband expected this of her when he wrote "She will be in pain, but she is strong and a gifted alchemist. She will turn her grief into new forms of grace and courage." How sweet to have the time to write your goodbyes and your benediction. And while Charles would perhaps not recognize his reborn wife, one assumes he would approve.

I first picked up the book to see if it was something to suggest to a recently widowed friend because I was intrigued by the suggestion of a good life after the death of a loved one. Having finished it, I'm not sure whether I will recommend it or not--partly because grief is so personal--but I will recommend it to my mother who always wished (and still does wish) for a life of collected friends around the table which is how Sarah's story ends. Every Last Cuckoo is, ultimately, not a story of grief, but of love and friendship and a really nice read.