Book Review: Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt

Making Toast: A Family Story by Roger Rosenblatt
Publisher: Ecco
Publication date: February 2010
ISBN: 9780061825958
Source: ARC provided by publisher

When Roger's daughter unexpectedly dies leaving her husband and three young children behind, he and his wife move in with them to help.  Adjusting to life without Amy seems impossible and too painful to imagine.  Roger must also relearn what it is like to live with children.  This memoir describes what that first year without her was like.

Things I Liked:
It was an emotional read for certain. How can it be anything else?  I loved the little glimpses of humor and happiness that happened anyway.  Especially with the children.  I think those kids made the whole book easier to read.  Without them, it would have been entirely too depressing.  They were sweet and I loved the relationship he was able to develop with those grandkids.  An interesting and also heartbreaking story.

Things I Didn't Like:
Honestly, I really struggled with the book.  I've read books about death and loss before, but I disliked how Rosenblatt dealt with it.  He seemed full of anger and frustration and hatred toward anything and everything (especially God) and I was hoping some of that would change.  Nope.  He never seems to come to terms with Amy's death and recognize anything good in his changed situation.  Possibly this might arise from my own personal beliefs, but I just thought how sad it was that he was so stuck on being resentful about her death that he never seemed able to move on.  It made the book more sad than hopeful and really hard to want to read.

Read-alikes:
Gosh, I don't read enough memoirs about grief to even think of any!

BOOK CONTENT RATINGS:
s-factor: !@#
not so much in numbers, but there are a few f-bombs

mrg-factor: none

v-factor: ->->
not violence really, but it's a mature and rather depressing story/situation

Overall rating: ***

Anybody have suggestions for a more hopeful memoir about grief?

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