Shadowchild: A Meditation on Love and Loss

by Andreas Ecke and P.F. Thomése

Book Overview

Missing word. A woman who buries her husband is called a widow, a man left behind without his wife, a widower. A child without parents is an orphan. But what do you call the father and mother of a child that has died?Shadowchild is an extraordinarily moving yet unsentimental examination of a parent's grief over the loss of a child. P.F. Thomése's baby was just a few weeks old when she died of a brain hemorrhage, and suddenly a piece of his life and...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374261911
• ISBN13: 9780374261917
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 116 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Extraordinarily moving

As a bereaved grandmother who is also a writer, I am impressed with P.F. Thomese's ability to express his grief through the written word. The author's use of language appears lyrical even in the English translation. I wept at the stark truth of his statement "She is nowhere else but in language". Part of his new normal following the death of his child is a journey of discovery for language to adequately describe his heartbreak. He manages to convey the isolation bereaved parents feel without ever using that particular word. This is a book I will turn to again and again.