What Comes Next and How to Like It: A Memoir

Resumen del libro

From the bestselling author of "A Three Dog Life," which "shines with honest intelligence" (Elizabeth Gilbert): a fresh, exhilarating, superbly written memoir about aging, family, creativity, tragedy, friendship, and the richness of life.
What comes next? What comes after the devastating loss of Abigail's husband, a process both sudden and slow? What form does her lifelong platonic friendship take after a certain line is crossed? How to cope with her daughter's diagnosed illness? Or the death of her beloved dog? Is life worth living without three cocktails before dinner? How do you paint the ocean on a sheet of glass?
And how to like it? How to accept, appreciate, enjoy? Who are our most trusted, valuable companions and what will we do for them? Instead of painting an ocean, paint a forest, turn it over, scrape the surface, and presto: there is the ocean. When you've given up, when you least expect it, there it is.
"What Comes Next and How to Like It" is an extraordinarily moving memoir about many things, but at the center is a steadfast friendship between Abigail Thomas and a man she met thirty-five years ago. Through marriages, child-raising, the vicissitudes and tragedies of life, it is this deep, rich bond that has sustained her. Readers who loved "the perfectly honed observations of a clear-eyed and witty writer" ("Newsweek") in Thomas's "spare, astonishing" ("Entertainment Weekly") memoir, "A Three Dog Life," will relish this beautiful examination of her life today--often solitary, but rich and engaging, with children, grandchildren, dogs, a few suitors, and her longtime best friend.

Biografía del autor

Abigail Thomas (Boston, 1941). Hija del renombrado escritor científico Lewis Thomas ( The Lives of a Cell ), es madre de cuatro hijos y abuela de doce nietos. Su educación académica se detuvo en el momento en que, embarazada de su hija mayor, se le pidió que abandonara la Universidad Bryn Mawr cuando cursaba su primer año. La mayor parte de su vida vivió en el Upper West Side de Manhattan: durante un tiempo fue editora y más adelante agente literaria. Después, comenzó a escribir. Sus tres primeras obras eran ficción, más tarde publicó Una vida de tres perros , las memorias con las que alcanzó la fama: seleccionado como uno de los mejores libros de 2006 por Los Angeles Times y The Washington Post, también ganó el Premio Inspirational Memoir 2006. Por lo demás, es autora de otros tres libros de memorias: Safekeeping , What Comes Next and How to Like It y Still Life at Eighty , de próxima publicación en Errata naturae. En la actualidad, vive en Woodstock, Nueva York, con sus perros.