Susan Huehn’s book The Widow’s Guide to Becoming a Handyman is a big-hearted and artfully-crafted memoir of passionate love, sudden loss, and messy grief set in a farm house restoration project. Readers whose anguish hasn’t followed the stages of grief in blue print order will appreciate Susan’s DYi-ing of her emotions and renovations after the premature death of her husband, Klaus. I love memoirs that interrogate and challenge accepted norms: this book gives us all space to rethink the grieving process.
From Nicole Helget, authorOne of my objectives in writing this book was to challenge the linear process that I believed grief was until I was in the midst of sudden loss and experienced something different. Maybe grief didn’t have a beginning, middle and end as I had told so many patients over the years? And what if we never finish grieving?