Customer Reviews

The Cure for Grief: A Novel

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I got this book just a week ago and already three people have consumed it! Who would think that a book dealing with such intense feelings could be a page turner? Who would believe that a woman in her twenties could teach us so much about life experiences few of us have experienced, but many have feared? Thank you, Ms. Hermann, for this simply, but elegantly told coming-of-age story. Thenk you for inviting us into the mind and heart of an extremely sensitive protagonist. Thank you for a fabulous read and a powerful personal growth experience.

Hermann's book tells the story of a young girl, Ruby, who suffers immense family losses as she grows up. The first half of the book chronicles these losses and Hermann does an amazing job of capturing the way shock can make terrible moments pass by almost without realizing how awful they are. Hermann lets Ruby lead the reader as she compartmentalizes and endures. In the second half of the book we see Ruby delve into her suffering and deal with her losses. This story offers the reader an opportunity to understand grief and the regeneration of love and emotional presence after loss.
Highly, highly recommended.

Hermann's book is riveting, not only because the events take unexpected and at times heart-wrenching turns, but also because the characters are so richly drawn, so full and alive, that I found myself wanting to spend more time with them. Emotionally vibrant and insightful, this novel is full of real people struggling to make sense of enormous loss while still loving and hoping and living.

As the novel opens Ruby is part of a happy family, with two parents and three older brothers. Her father is a holocaust survivor and there is that awful shadow hanging over the story and the happiness in Ruby's life is going to be sorely tried as she loses first a brother to madness, then both her father and another brother to brain tumors.

These tragedies are part of what shapes Ruby's adolescence as she struggles to understand and cope with sadness and sometimes rage and certainly grief.

I lost my father when I was in junior high school. We were very close and it was very traumatic. Not a day goes by and it's been a long, long time, that I don't think about him, so I was able to put myself in Ruby's shoes pretty easily, though the writing is so good, that I think anybody will be able to identify with her.

But this book is more, I think, than the grief of a young girl. It's about the grief of a people too, even if it's not so precisely stated. That holocaust shadow still covers much of the world with it's inky blackness, reminding us that we shouldn't forget. This books helps remind us too, because it really is more than just a young girl's story and the grief she suffers.

This is a debut novel by Nellie Hermann - and what a debut from someone who is obviously wise beyond their years. The reader can completely feel Ruby's grief - her confusion and her disconnect from her family. The author's prose enabled the reader to delve into Ruby's personality and experience the complex feelings that swirled through her mind. Ruby's journey from her first very young experience with mental illness to her awakening to her feelings and her reemergence into living kept me completely enthralled. I was able to relate to a lot of her confusions and questions - I highly recommend this book.

I don't know why, but for some reason I truly connected with this book. As many other reviewers have expressed, this book is everything that I am not...dark, depressing and serious. I was glued to it. I think I was hoping for some sort of redemption or ray of light at the end. The tragedies that Ruby Bronstein (and her mother, too) had to endure would have pushed many of us over the edge, but Ruby manages to keep it together for a long, long time until it all comes boiling out. She has accepted her lot in life and best expresses it on page 246 when she says "If there's anything certain about the future, it is that it will hold more loss." Very sad, yet quite telling about the depths one will be reduced to when repeatedly beaten down. The reader can use that frame of mind while reading THE CURE FOR GRIEF, or do as I did and choose Mr. Bronstein's recurring addage: "Life is the highest good, whenever it is possible, choose life." This is one of those books that hit home for me. I loved it at this particular time in my life, however, if I were to read it 5 months from now, or 5 years from now I can't guarantee my feelings would be the same. Overall, this is a well-written novel about a family like yours and mine, that is forced to endure overwhelming tragedy. There are moments of levity interspersed throughout so it's not all doom and gloom. I highly recommend THE CURE FOR GRIEF.

For me as a person, it was hard to "like" this book in an entertainment sense, although it held my attention pretty well. Through the dour circumstances, it was hard to find anything to look forward too. Now this book is not protesting to be anything else, and I commend it for that, but for me it was just very depressing.

Maybe lives are really like this? This book may be one of the more real tales I've read, for the fact it's like life, nothing is fair and nothing is handed to us. In this story, there is not one shred of hope given to Ruby, and there is no hope for us as a reader to experience anything but despair throughout. Maybe the author wanted it that way. How the character finds hope at the end, well I'll never figure that out, but maybe hope is the only thing left after the kind of life she had. And that one moment is the only bit of light at the end of the tunnel that this book offers, and that may be the freshest feeling you can feel, that out of all the dying and suffering that someone can come out with an inkling of optimism.

I gave it 3 stars yes. But would I recommend it? Well I would for the writing, for the boldness, and the realness, but if you do not take well to depressing stories, steer clear because that is the only dose you are prescribed when you optically trace the letters here.

This is a very quiet book. The story of Ruby Bronstein's adolescence covers a number of family tragedies - illnesses and death come in very quick succession. Nothing is told with great drama. She incurs one loss after another while her story is told almost matter of fact. Although I liked this book and enjoyed reading it, I was never compelled to read "just a little more" and had no trouble putting it down and going to sleep. It was an interesting read, a level telling of a tale without the depth of emotion that would have had me reading all night. Although three tragedies happen to Ruby in just a few years, it was almost like a book where nothing happens. Good, but without a hook that left me wanting more.

Ruby is the youngest child in a Jewish family. She is close to her three older brothers growing up but then a series of tragedies begin to begall her family.

Although this book is well written, I had trouble getting into it. Mostly because I never feel like I got into Ruby--not into her heart. The author tells us she is broken up about the tragedies but I never felt the closeness between her and her brothers. Her father is a holocaust survivor but we know nothing of his exeriences and never get to know him. Same with the mother. It's really hard to care much about all the awful things that happen when I don't really know or care about the characters. This book seems to be a lot of telling but little showing. I would have liked a lot more depth and feeling.

This was a deeply moving story about Ruby Bronstein and her struggle from the age of 10 to deal with loss and grief. She is the youngest child of an upper middle class Jewish family in Massachusets. She is also the only girl with three brothers 5, 8 and 10 years older than her.

Her father is a holocoust survivor and a warm and loving father yet distant with firm strict rules. Her first loss in her family is when her oldest brother becomes mentally ill and never is the same again. In fact, an older Ruby will barely remember him before his mental illness. Soon after this tragedy her father is diagnosed with a brain tumor and within a couple of years he dies.

Her oldest brother, Abe, has been hospitalized for his illness, the next oldest, Aaron, is away at college. Her brother, Nathan, closest to her age and the one she was closest to has just recently left for college. Nathan one day while at home begins to have symptoms that result in his being diagnosed with the same tumor their father had. He ends up in a coma and then finally he as well dies.

Throughout all of these trials Ruby is an adolecesent then teenager trying to live a normal life. Her oldest brother begins to live with her and her mother again, yet, he is still unbalanced and not well at all. Her grief is so bottled up within her she is just going through the motions. She stays in her bedroom most of the time when at home. When at school and with her friends she trys to leave her other world behind her.

This is a deeply moving story with a honest, believable ending to the novel. The losses and sorrow this young girl has to go through in her formidable years is overwhelming. Yet, the power of family and love and faith seem to come through and it was a very satisfying book to read. My heart went out to this family, most especially Ruby. This is worth reading. Remarkable work by this author.