Phantom Limb (American Lives)

By Janet Sternburg

Book Overview

Phantom Limb is a wise and courageous memoir that moves between past and present, chronicling an adult daughter's journey through the final years of her parents' lives. A story of discovering love through adversity as well as an inquiry into contemporary neurology and spiritual life, Phantom Limb is a moving meditation on the struggle to make peace with physical and emotional ghosts of the past. Janet Sternburg writes with such warmth and honesty that loss itself becomes luminous: "This is the grace of the last years, the children coming to understand the contradictions in their parents, not to reconcile them but encompass them in a larger love."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803242964
• ISBN13: 9780803242968
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 148 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.7" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

A beautiful journey of life

I read this beautiful book cover-to-cover in one sitting as I just could not put it down. I think the description might be a bit misleading as it makes the book sound like a sad lament of loss, when in fact it is a joyous celebration of life. "Phantom Limb"also puts life into perspective, and will hopefully alter yours--as it has mine.Ms. Sternburg explores her relationship with her mother and father touchingly, as her tale weaves back and forth from the past to the present, revealing the delicate nature of the human condition. The story is written in searingly honest prose, each one a self-contained vignette that links together to form the memory of whole human lives. This book is not necessarily just for people coping with loss...it's much more than that. "Phantom Limb" does exactly what good literature should do: it transports the reader to another realm, and it's beauty will stay with you, long after you put the book down.

A poet's understanding of loss

What a brilliant, heartbreaking, wise book. The central metaphor is haunting and unforgettable. Janet Sternburg, in her heart of hearts, is a true poet.

Phantom Limb is a wonder

This story is mesmerizing and painfully real to anybody who has lost a parent to illness. It's beautifully told, without being overtly sentimental. Sternberg skillfully lets us enter her world as a daughter, a caregiver and a woman who is also dealing with the baggage of her own illness. You are with her every step of the way. It is rich in its telling and goes straight to the heart. I also found the detail in which she describes being an advocate for her mother a fascinating study that can be useful to anyone that is put in the situation of navigating care for ourselves or someone else. Phantom Limb speaks to what so many of us have either faced or will have to go through as our parents age. Bravo!