Books

Joan Didion’s masterpiece on grief after the sudden death of her husband of 40 years. A lucid, devastating, and ultimately illuminating account of what it means to lose a life partner and face the future alone. Essential for any woman navigating widowhood or profound loss.

A woman accompanies her terminally ill friend through the final weeks of her life — and through the process confronts her own relationship to mortality, meaning, and what we owe each other at the end. Sigrid Nunez writes about dying with the same precise, unsentimental intelligence she brings to everything.

Palliative care physician Kathryn Mannix has spent her career helping people die well. In this luminous book she shares the stories of patients and families navigating the end of life — and makes the case that dying, approached with honesty and preparation, can be peaceful rather than frightening. Essential reading for anyone who intends to grow old.