The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order [Hardcover]

Joan Wickersham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 2008

When you kill yourself, you kill every memory everyone has of you. You’re saying “I’m gone and you can’t even be sure who it is that’s gone, because you never knew me.”

Sixteen years ago, Joan Wickersham’s father shot himself in the head. The father she loved would never have killed himself, and yet he had. His death made a mystery of his entire life. Using an index—that most formal and orderly of structures—Wickersham explores this chaotic and incomprehensible reality. Every bit of family history—marriage, parents, business failures—and every encounter with friends, doctors, and other survivors exposes another facet of elusive truth. Dark, funny, sad, and gripping, at once a philosophical and deeply personal exploration, The Suicide Index is, finally, a daughter’s anguished, loving elegy to her father.
(20080624)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In spare prose, Wickersham (The Paper Anniversary) has produced an artful and vivid memoir. Within the index of suicide, she has found a form capacious enough for both intimate detail and general information; cold data and lyric moments; for mystery and for consolation. As she follows her father's suicide chronologically from his death through a passage of 15 years, she doubles back through family history (her mother's, her father's, her husband's), telling the story under such subheads as anger about, other people's stories about, possible ways to talk to a child about, romances of mother in years following. Her search takes in matters as mundane as the police investigation, as academic as the nature of biography and as disquieting as the issue of suicide. The elementary facts—when, where, and how—are straightforward, even simple: My father got up early one morning, went into his study, and shot himself, but her pursuit of why leads Wickersham and her reader into the unanswerable questions [and] unresolvable paradoxes that give her book classic qualities. (Aug.)
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Review

PRAISE FOR THE SUICIDE INDEX 

Written in the form of an index, an acknowledgment of Wickersham’s inability to frame her father’s act in any conventional linear form, this memoir is written in a cool, economical and ultimately piercing style utterly devoid of easy pathos or cliché. Anyone prone to facile dismissal of the memoir as literary high art should be silenced by the perfection of Wickersham's prose and her ability to hold the facts and her feelings up to the light, turning them again and again to reveal yet another facet of grief, anger, love, pity and guilt.

-- Laura Miller, Salon.com

[A] remarkable memoir. . . she exposes the whole messy territory of inheritance, of heritage, of what our families leave us, the treacherous trail of genetics and psychology and unhappiness, the legacy of all those generations as they play out in ways that we can see and ways that we will never see across the patterns of our lives. . . true in a way that transcends mere recollection . . . (S)he arrives at an almost perfect balance, producing a survivor's story, a portrait of suicide from the outside, one that finds clarity in its inability to be clarified.

-- David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

Honest, brave, incredibly moving, and completely unflinching in its honesty. It’s one of those rare books that will haunt you for a long time after you finish it. . . . Wickersham's writing is gorgeous, restrained and lyrical at the same time, and there's not an extraneous word or ounce of fat in the book. In trying to comprehend what happened, Wickersham uses the format of an index, in an attempt to impose an order and shape on what appears to be a chaotic, perhaps random, act of her father's. . . . [An] amazing memoir.

-- Nancy Pearl, KUOW / National Public Radio

Joan Wickersham’s deceptively simple organization of this volume packs a hard jab to the throat, and I found myself alternately holding my breath and looking away from the words on the page in stunned silence, Reading this book is a physical act – of beauty, of pain and of frankness. The sections on writing and truth are some of the finest I’ve seen.

- Kelly McMasters, Newsday

Joan Wickersham's deeply moving memoir seeks to comprehend the incomprehensible . . . What propels every intensely crafted page of this book is Wickersham's relentless drive to comprehend her father's suicide . . . Wickersham has journeyed into the dark underworld inside her father and herself, and has emerged with a powerful, gripping story.

-- Chuck Leddy, Boston Globe

[A] daughter's piercing and profoundly considered response to [her father’s] death. She constructs her book like a series of index cards, with chapter headings that mimic those on outlines. It becomes a brilliant choice, allowing Wickersham to flip and sort through 15 years of what William Maxwell observed when he wrote, ‘The suicide doesn't go alone, he takes everybody with him.’ . . . Against the violent transgression of suicide, Wickersham has crafted a consummately subtle book. . . . In its discipline and art, The Suicide Index has the feel of a classic.

-- Karen Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer

I read The Suicide Index with a rapacity bordering on need, with tears in my chest and in my eyes. Occasionally I had to put it down and leave the room. More often, I devoured it. The book is . . . the measured, elegant, gripping work of a professional writer who has set her powers of observation to work on her own family — her parents and grandparents, her uncle, her sister, her husband, her son — and on herself.

-- Laura Collins-Hughes, New York Sun

[A]n extraordinary, magical mystery tour of a book.

-- Heller McAlpin, Los Angeles Times

What makes the narrative so compelling is not only Wickersham’s gift for making her memories sing as though they were our own, but also how she presents herself as a willful seeker, open to any and all incarnations of truth, able to admit how much she doesn’t know and never did. . . . in this very moving memoir, Wickersham comes as close as she’s able to getting it right.

-- Elle

In spare prose, Wickersham has produced an artful and vivid memoir . . . capacious enough for both intimate detail and general information; cold data and lyric moments; for mystery and for consolation. The elementary facts – where, when, and how – are straightforward, even simple . . but her pursuit of "why" leads Wickersham and her reader into the "unanswerable questions and unresolvable paradoxes" that give her book classic qualities.

-- Publishers Weekly

This book is beautifully written and haunts the reader long after it’s closed.

-- Library Journal

[A] sensitive and thorough memoir built around her father's suicide and the mystery of why he did it. It is both haunting and comforting to see how she puts her father's death "in order."

-- Knoxvillle News Sentinel

She writes beautifully. . . about the amount of sheer space a suicide takes in the lives of surviving family members, from the moment of death through the weeks, months and years afterward. . . . Bleak, strong and fiercely honest.

-- Reeve Lindbergh, Washington Post

In this harrowing, beautifully written memoir, Joan Wickersham tries to understand the forces that drove her father to take his own life. Part detective story, part anguished examination of a family, The Suicide Index traces the myriad repercussions suicide has not only on the future but also on the past. A powerful, important book.

-- Abigail Thomas, author of A Three Dog Life

The Suicide Index is just astonishing. Having endured the suicide of a close family member, I opened this book with dread and longing: fearful of revisiting so much pain yet keenly wanting, as I always will, to understand why. No one can ever fully answer the question that suicide remains for those left behind, yet here, in Joan Wickersham’s exquisitely straightforward story, I found surprising consolation. It is a love story, a mystery, a quiet tragedy, a dark comedy, and a profoundly absorbing modern family saga. It will stay with me for a very long time.

-- Julia Glass, author of Three Junes and I See You Everywhere

(20080615)

"In spare prose, Wickersham has produced an artful and vivid memoir...within the index of ‘suicide,’ she has found a form capacious enough for both intimate detail and general information...her pursuit of ‘why’ leads Wickersham and her reader into the ‘unanswerable questions and resolvable paradoxes’ that give her book classic qualities."

(Publishers Weekly 20080615)

"In this harrowing, beautifully written memoir, Joan Wickersham tries to understand the forces that drove her father to take his own life. Part detective story, part anguished examination of a family, she traces the myriad repercussions suicide has not only on the future but also on the past. And she has created the perfect form in which to stage her inquiry. A powerful, important book."

(Abigail Thomas, author of THREE DOG LIFE 20080804)

"The Suicide Index is just astonishing. Having endured the suicide of a close family member, I opened this book with dread and longing: fearful of revisiting so much pain yet keenly wanting, as I always will, to understand why. No one can ever fully answer the devastating question that suicide remains for those left behind, yet here, in Joan Wickersham''s exquisitely straightforward story, I found surprising consolation. It is a love story, a mystery, a quiet tragedy, a dark comedy, and a profoundly absorbing modern family saga. It will stay with me for a very long time."

(Julia Glass, author of Three Junes 20080904)

"This book is beautifully written and haunts the reader long after it''s closed."

(Library Journal 20080915)

"Wickersham''s tender, funny, occasionally sardonic, and ultimately gut-wrenching memoir is more a story of family life than a somber assessment of self-murder."

(The Boston Globe 20080818)

[Wickersham] exposes the whole messy territory of inheritance, of heritage, of what our families leave us, the treacherous trail of genetics and psychology and unhappiness, the legacy of all those generations as they play out in ways that we can see and ways that we will never see across the patterns of our lives...an almost perfect balance, producing a survivor''s story, a portrait of suicide from the outside, one that finds clarity in its inability to be clarified.



 

(Los Angeles Times )

Wickersham refuses to settle for sentimental, simplistic answers. Her absorbing narrative is suffused with a profound longing to understand what went wrong in her father''s life...Joan Wickersham has journeyed into the dark underworld inside her father and herself, and has emerged with a powerful, gripping story.

(Leddy, Chuck The Boston Globe )

Bleak, strong, and fiercely honest, this book will help anyone going through [the process of loss].

(Reeve Lindbergh Washington Post )

Wickersham, the top-drawer writer, expresses little anger toward her father; she feels that she''s the only one left who''s on his side. But she is terrible in her loyalty to him; as she recounts the various instances in which his fragile dignity was wounded during his life, you cringe, in turn, for her mother, her in-laws, her father''s business partner, her father''s parents, and so on, when she trains her pitiless eye on one after the other.

(salon.com )

Compassionate, loyal, quietly keening.

(Laura Collins-Hughes The New York Sun )

The Suicide Index is the daughter''s piercing and profoundly considered response to [her father''s] death … Brilliant… Against the violent transgression of suicide, Wickersham has crafted a consummately subtle book… In its discipline and art, The Suicide Index has the feel of a classic.

(Cleveland Plain Dealer )

Honest, brave, incredibly moving and completely unflinching in its honesty. It''s one of those rare books that will haunt you for a long time after you finish it . . . Wickersham''s writing is gorgeous, restrained and lyrical at the same time . . . Amazing.

(KUOW )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st American edition (August 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151014906
• ISBN-13: 978-0151014903
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #919,386 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "It's like he busted through the guardrail.", July 23, 2008

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order (Hardcover)

Wickersham takes a very tragic experience, applying a logical index to ungovernable feelings, penning a memoir of her father's suicide that is honest, painstaking and filled with emotional landmines. From the morning she receives the call from her distraught mother, to years later, still grappling with the complicated feelings- acceptable and unacceptable- that plague her life after this loss, the author exquisitely describes the long, dark torment of those left behind by such an act of self-annihilation. The first response, of course, is numbness, a soft-lensed vacuum that allows the family to survive the early days of shock, the outpouring of support from friends and relatives, with the occasional flash of inexplicable rage that lurks beneath the surface. It is the following years that dominate her grieving process, thinking and rethinking what could have been done to prevent the suicide, to intervene.

The elephant in the room, of course, is the undeniable violence of such an action, so heinous and selfish as to belie any daughter's memories of a loving, slightly eccentric father, a man carrying the scars of a brutal childhood and a lack of business sense that adversely affects his family's financial security. The bonds between this eldest daughter and her father are like steel cables; she favors him over her mother, with whom she has an uneasy, somewhat antagonistic relationship, especially after the suicide, the mother flapping wildly through her own jumble of confused emotions, both guilty and self-defensive, left pondering the interminable, unanswerable question: why? Although the author has a sister, it is the nature of such a loss that the sibling is hardly mentioned. This is an intense, solitary journey, an anguished, chronically self-obsessed need for answers, a patient husband dealing with the fall out years later.

Wickersham catalogs every nuance, every instinct, every possibility, trapped in a dilemma not of her own making, her life haunted years after the pivotal event. She is stuck, unable to move forward, happiness no longer a viable expectation. It is to this writer's credit that I continue to read this memoir: I didn't particularly like her father or his final resolution to overwhelming problems. On the other hand, neither have I experienced the kind of bond shared by this man and his daughter. No, I was in it for the experience, willing to follow wherever Wickersham might lead. If she has the courage to flay her soul in search of answers, who am I to shy away? "It's a crooked, looping, labyrinthine story." Indeed, it is and one with no easy answers or facile resolutions. I hope this troubled man appreciated his extraordinary child and her capacity for compassion. I doubt I would have been as forgiving. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stunning Memoir, July 7, 2008

By 

Violet Quill (Waltham, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order (Hardcover)

Every once in a while a book comes along that you know will be classic. Such a book is Joan Wickersham's eloquent and honest account of her father's suicide. The book works brilliantly on a number of levels. It is a deeply moving work that sheds great light on the ripple effects of a suicide. Wickersham's writing is so captivating that you feel like you're taking this journey with her, right in the present moment. Beyond this, "The Suicide Index" is an exploration into how we construct and reconstruct our past to make sense of our lives. The use of the index is so integral to the telling of this story it's impossible to see how any other format would have worked. All of this is to say that the book will obviously appeal to those touched by suicide, but it should also be required reading for anyone interested in the memoir. "The Suicide Index" is a rare find these days: a truly original piece of literature.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elegantly, objectively and with great wit and depth, August 2, 2008

By 

Sally Gardener "Red Pencil Sharpener" (Provincial Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order (Hardcover)

One of the edgiest topics for the human being to explain to oneself, let alone set down for an audience : suicide. Perhaps easier if one's own intended is the story but this is a father's suicide taken on by his eldest and perhaps favorite daughter.

Joan Wickersham does something brilliant and highly original in what is both a journal and a once-upon-a-time consideration of a man's life.

In compelling yet often dispassionate and sometimes hilarious chapters, Wickersham considers the facts about her family's biographical and social, bodily and geographical conditions as clues to the inevitability of this death.

In an almost seamless and well-paced manner, Wickersham makes it possible for the reader easily to join her in turning over pieces of clothing, pastry, furniture, or trinkets with the possibility always present that there is not just an explanation for this tragedy but an (imaginary) reversal of the fact that this man has willingly removed himself forever from life.

This is the story of a mid-20th century individual set before us by the writer's ease with which she slips contemporary events in with narratives about a disparate cast of artistic, impractical, cruel, aristocratic, and forceful forebearers. She offers us the earnest 1950's Americans and their aspirations in the post WW II business world alongside the disengaged WASP yacht and horse set of 1980's; the uncertain intimacy of the psychiatrist's quiet, with a tremulous, frustrated mother's voice to an inarticulate, depressed young child.

And we are taken to both dark or comic corners : the anatomically specific autopsy report read by a daughter of her father's body, an unconventional Dance institute performance by an aging doyenne observed by an embarrassed father and granddaughter; we meet the dopplegangers of her father who Wickersham embraces, as well as her plump, self-deluding mother who perpetuates failures of romance even in her years of decrepitude.

Wickersham has a particularly clever but highly original take on certain quarters of American life - early 20th century cultural immigrants, the educated and aspiring of the Eastcoast, the perserverance of children faced with the incomprehesible, with abandonment. But this is not a sappy tale nor leaden, but it's a dense one which moves quickly and somehow, like the daughter-writer, we want one more chapter; we don't seem to want an end to the facts of a suicide.

Helpfully, she incorporates a strong bibliographic epilogue of Western writers on the topic of suicide, couching the auto-biographical issue with which she is faced, in sturdy, graceful objectivity.

The reader easily comes along on every page with this reluctant, brave, and highly intelligent daughter as she attempts to assume and then banish responsibility for her parent's suicide.