This was such a beautiful book about grief and loss. Alexandra Fuller never disappoints with her books!

A heartbreaking emotional read. Fuller beautifully depicts the harrowing effects of losing a child and the grief that ensues. A powerful, shattering memoir.

"Fi," by Alexandra Fuller, was one of the most heartbreaking books I've ever read. Written in the aftermath of her 21-year-old son's sudden and unexplained death, Fuller's memoir viscerally takes readers into the darkest depths of her grief, from the moment she is told that Fi has died, through the almost unbearable pain of the following year. It is both a loving tribute to Fi and the person he was, and an intensely personal description of the many strategies Fuller tries--isolating herself in a camper on top of a remote mountaintop, attending both a "grief retreat" and a more extreme 10-day silent meditation program, buying land and building a yurt on it--to help her through the crucible. It is also a companion book, of sorts, to Fuller's debut, "Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight," a memoir about her childhood in what is now Zimbabwe and the dysfunction her family suffered as the result of the deaths of several children. Having experienced her mother's breakdown after those tragedies, Fuller determines to find a way to survive for the sake of her two daughters, writing at one point, "This was the way, for us, for now; until the way changed again, then there'd be another way until at last we'd realize that we either were the way, or we were in the way. There is no other way." "Fi' is certainly a difficult read, but Fuller's brave and honest account of her grief might give some comfort to those trying to find their own ways through similar circumstances.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Grove Press for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

I loved Fuller’s first memoir, but didn’t realize how many she has written subsequently. I enjoy her writing and she can deftly express emotions through a scene. However, this book left me very depressed and I didnt read to the end.

Alexandra Fuller is one of my favorite authors. After reading all six book about her family and loving them I was eager to read her newest book describing her life after the loss of her son. Although well written as always this was my least favorite book so far. I understand her grief was bottomless but many people have to deal with grief and eventually go back to work and move on.

There is no word for a person who has lost a child, even one fully grown to adulthood. They are still your child. There is the term widow, widower, but no term exists in English for that reversal of nature when a parent outlives a child. Grief takes over, and the memory of that person who a parent has known since before birth haunt and flood, and all aspects of that person recur. When Alexandra Fuller's son, aged 21, dies in his sleep, she and the entire family is encompassed by grief. Gifted with a poet's soul, she adds to her memoirs with this depiction of grief, shattering and redemptive at the same time.

There is something about grief books that just get to me—that fascinate me. This one was no exception. Grief is so incredibly universal, we all must feel it at some point in our life. Grief will flay you open and leave you feeling like there is nothing left inside and Fuller was able to represent that very well in this memoir. She was able to take her tragedy and turn it in to something remarkably heart-felt and beautiful.

Powerful and challenging - but beautifully written as per usual with Alexandra Fuller. I felt like an extra round of edits could’ve helped as I noticed a few repetitive words/phrases. But it doesn’t take away from the power of her writing at all. AF is one of my favorite authors and I am glad she was able to turn this tragedy into something beautiful- this book

I should have know that this book will trigger my own depression. It is sad, devastating and very personal. Don't read it if you have lost somebody you love or if you already suffer of depression.

"All parents who hear of Fi's death have told me this: I wouldn't survive the death of my child, as if my child's death must therefore have been a lesser death than the death of their child would be. Or me, as if I must be a less grief-stricken parent than they would be, if it happened to them. I tell them that I didn't survive and also that I did. Both things happened." (loc. 1358*)

Alexandra Fuller was still grieving the loss of her father when the unthinkable happened—her son Fi died suddenly, unexpectedly, still in the prime of his youth. And Fuller came undone, because what else can you do when that happens?

This is a grief memoir—full stop. Fuller is a hell of a writer, which is not news. Here she spills herself broken onto the page: questioning how she can possibly be expected to survive, pulling from book after book and writer after writer to articulate the depths of her loss and apply balm to her soul. She takes to the mountains and the sky, to the ocean and a grief retreat and a meditation retreat, not in some sort of targeted quest but because the only thing she can do is give her life over to grief, and to find new rhythms for it.

"It's worse in town, in the condo, my restlessness, my panic. Only the wild—even the scorched, diminished, smoke-hazed wild—seems conducive to my unwieldy grief. Grand enough to be the grief, to soak up the grief, to reflect it back at me, my feelings as thunder, wind, wildfire. In the mountains, I'd understood the warp and weft of my grief; I'd accepted its weather. In the mountains my grief was shouted back at me with praise and with majesty, in the oldest, most sovereign sense of that word." (loc. 1628)

I have not read "Travel Light, Move Fast", Fuller's memoir about her father's death, but Fi died when she was partway through writing it, and there's no way on earth that that didn't reset the shape of that book. Someday I'll pick that up too, because I'm curious about how they overlap and how they don't, and also because I don't think it's possible for Fuller to write a book that is anything other than dramatic and sharp and so vivid it hurts.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.