Alexandra Marshall

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Rejecting Denial and Embracing Sorrow: On Writing the Story of a Husband's Suicide

Lit Hub, August 2024

In my first attempt to address the subject of my young husband's suicide, the story I wrote bore no resemblance to the reality of his death, or to my own life. I thought this was what creativity was all about. The best thing about that earliest work was its title, The Child Widow, which was a gift from Philip Roth, my first reader, who awarded it like a gold star when he encouraged me to consider myself a writer. After that false start in 1970 I went on to write other novels. I also tried many other times to write about Tim. Finally, because the title was too good to waste, I set aside those previous efforts and wrote "The Child Widow," an energetic short story published by the literary journal Ploughshares and designated among "100 Other Distinguished Stories of 2003" in The Best American Short Stories. That was good enough for me, so I called my original ambition fulfilled and let it go. Or so I thought.

Read the full article at Lit Hub.