Fără. Despre iubire, suferinta si pierdere

Aurora Liiceanu asks how people cope when a loved one dies. Some deaths come after a long illness. Others come with no warning. She asks how grief differs when people feel at fault. This book looks at grief through psychology, the study of the mind. It is for readers who seek to grasp grief and its lasting effects.

She draws on the lives of Julian Barnes and Joan Didion. She also looks at the life of Joyce Carol Oates. She studies Fermina Daza in García Márquez’s Dragostea în vremea holerei, too. Each loses a spouse and seeks ways to face the loss. Their stories show how grief can change one's sense of self. She draws on Anne Lamott to ask how people go on. They may do so without healing in full.

Didion also lost her daughter, Quintana, who died at 39. Less than two years had passed since her husband's death. These losses shook her views on family and illness. They shook her views on memory and fate, too. Her story shows a gap between two kinds of grief. One is the grief we imagine; the other is pain we live through.

Liiceanu has a doctorate in psychology and has done research. She has taught in Bucharest and at UQAM in Canada. She has also taught at EHESS in France. She has held a senior research role at the Romanian Academy’s Constantin Rădulescu-Motru Institute of Philosophy and Psychology. The book forms part of Polirom’s Aurora Liiceanu author series.