Two contemporary novels, two kinds of loss: one that comes without warning and one that everyone knows is coming. While After Annie by Anna Quindlen (2024) deals with sudden loss, We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman (2022) deals with anticipated loss/grief.
Sudden Loss Versus Anticipated Loss
The website On Tuesdays We Wear Black does a great job of distilling the distinctions between these types.
Sudden loss tends to produce shock and disbelief, strong emotional reactions, unanswered questions, and disruption of normalcy. Anticipated loss, on the other hand, “occurs when a death is expected due to circumstances such as a terminal illness, advanced age, or chronic disease. While the knowledge of an impending loss allows some time to prepare, it doesn’t necessarily make the grieving process easier.” Key parts of anticipated loss are anticipatory grief, emotional preparation, a complex mix of emotions partly due to possible relief, and prolonged stress.
Sudden Loss: After Annie
Per the publisher: “When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her children, and her closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the lynchpin of all their lives.” Annie is only in her 30’s.
A selected quote: “They were all floating in some in-between where nothing seemed real and nothing seemed right. Waiting for the rest of life, whatever that was, a future that felt like a betrayal.”
Publishers Weekly: “The lesson Quindlen offers is universal and incontrovertible: love and memories are powerful antidotes to grief. After [daughter] Ali starts seeing her school counselor, things begin to turn around for the family. Though the ending ties everything together a bit too neatly, Quindlen makes the magnitude of her characters’ loss feel palpable to the reader. It’s another acute portrait of family life from a virtuoso of the form.”
Anticipated Loss: We All Want Impossible Things
Ash has been best friends with Edi, age 45, who has ovarian cancer, most of their lives. Publishers Weekly: “…(T)his isn’t just a harrowing depiction of the heartbreak and indignity of Edi’s decline, it’s also about Ash, who stumbles through her disintegrating marriage, contends with her daughter’s refusal to go to school, and takes a series of lovers. Ash also details the moments—at turns hilarious and sad—that make up her friendship, calling Edi’s memories a ‘back-up hard drive’ for her own. Here and throughout, Newman does a wonderful job channeling Ash’s sense of impending loss.”
A common type of sentiment among readers: “I laughed while crying, and was left revived. Newman is a comic masterhand and a dazzling philosopher of the day-to-day” (author Amity Gaige).
Selected Quotes Spoken by Ash
It’s the anticipation I can’t handle. Loss lurks around every corner, and how do we prepare?
It’s monstrous. It is too much to take. Why do we even do this—love anybody? Our dumb animal hearts.
Is it better to have loved and lost? Ask anyone in pain and they’ll tell you no. And yet. Here we are, hurling ourselves headlong into love like lemmings off a cliff into a churning sea of grief. We risk every last thing for our heart’s expansion, even when that expanded heart threatens to suffocate us and then burst.
