Grief: A Novel

Grief: A Novel
Publishing House: Hyperion
WorkNameSort: Grief: A Novel
No one grieved quite like Mary Todd Lincoln. In the wake of her husband’s assassination, the first lady donned black garb and never again appeared in anything else. ‘She was not just any widow,â?� wrote Todd’s biographer, Jean H. Baker, ‘she was Abraham Lincoln’s survivor.â?� In his devastating new novella, Andrew Holleran embroiders this history into the tale of a gay college professor who moves to Washington, D.C., from Florida in the wake of his mother’s death, takes up residence in a rooming house and begins reading the letters of Mary Todd Lincoln, wondering, like her, if it’s ever possible to start over.

Grief elegantly circles this question, using Washington and its spooky environs as an echo chamber for its themes. Among the city’s shadows are the ghosts of countless men struck down by AIDS. ‘You don’t know what D.C. was like during the ’80s,â?� says one of the narrator’s friends. ‘Funerals, funerals, funerals! I got my suntan one summer from just standing in Rock Creek Cemetery.â?� This experience has turned Holleran’s landlord into a ‘homosexual emeritus,â?� celibate and alone. With his mother gone, his ties to the past dissolving, Holleran’s narrator finds himself tacking toward that place as well, painfully aware that love has eluded him.

This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2006.