This is a beautiful look at relationships and loss while also a study of language and the words we leave for each other.

Soep's book is her reflections upon grieving two close friends who passed a few years apart. She is extremely open and honest about her relationships, both with the friends themselves, as well as the other friends, family, and partners they left behind. Along with personal recollections, she weaves in the philosophies of a Russian author/scholar named Bakhtin. While I appreciated learning about how his philosophies on language comforted her in times of grief, I found some of the passages too long and/or too detailed, however, I have never been a great lover of philosophy. Still, this is a short book with interesting ideas that I think will serve many people.

My thanks to Spiegel & Grau and NetGalley for a copy of “ Other People’s Words” for an honest review.

This was a different sort of book than I had been expecting , so sadly I wasn’t able to complete it.Ive had a recent bereavement so it probably wasn’t the right time to review it
I’m sure it will be of help to other so I’ve given it an average score

This book explores the profound influence our loved ones have on our lives, even after they've passed away. It beautifully illustrates how their presence continues to resonate within us, shaping our thoughts and actions. Through its poignant narrative, the book portrays a vision of interconnectedness—how we are all linked through the words we share and the unspoken language that binds us together daily.

It delves into the idea that words themselves can embody memories of times gone by, serving as poignant reminders of cherished moments and connections. For me, reading this book was a source of comfort during a period of grief, as it resonated deeply with my experience of mourning the loss of a loved one.

Overall, this insightful read offers not only an engaging story but also a profound exploration of the enduring impact of relationships and how they continue to shape our lives long after we say goodbye.

3.5/5.

http://thesecretbookreview.co.uk

I talked about this book on my small YouTube channel.

Transcript:

Lissa Soep’s Other People’s Words is subtle and surprisingly moving. On the surface, it too is about death and grieving, although there is something else going on, too. What sets up this book is the death of two of the author’s close friends: Jonnie, who died suddenly in a swimming accident, and Christine, who died slowly from an illness that profoundly reshaped her cognition. Soep, who had been close to not only these two people but also their wives, writes from a perspective that is a bit more…controlled, more academic almost. That words “academic” often implies that it is emotionally removed, and that isn’t true here, at least for me. Instead, it is a step backwards that allows her to see a bigger picture. And that bigger picture helps her come to terms with what happened to her friends—both the friends who died, and to their now-widowed spouses.

What she does to get to this bigger angle is to talk about my very favorite literary theorist and ethicist, Mikhail Bakhtin. One of his most influential books is The Dialogic Imagination, which I first read my senior year of college. I was doing some studying with one of my English-major friends, who was struggling through a whole stack of dense books for his class in literary criticism. When I finished the book about medieval social history or the history of medicine or whatever it was I reading for class, I picked something out of his stack. Immediately, I loved his idea of heteroglossia—that is, the concept that all language contains within it a multiplicity of perspectives or viewpoints. And the reason it is true is because language is fundamentally created and expressed in conversation, in dialogue with each other. In other words, instead of emphasizing text alone, we should also be thinking about CONTEXT. (You can imagine that this was the kind of literary theory that would fit perfectly for us historians out there, who are most concerned with context.) Because I was pretty much unaware of literary theory when I was 21 years old, I very quickly started thinking of Bakhtin’s ideas in very personal, real-life kinds of ways. Whenever I talked to my academic friends about how I had essentially incorporated his theories into my way non-academic life of friendships, they all looked at me as if I were nuts. But here in this book, the author doing exactly that. Soep’s major point is that language—conversations and even specific words—contain echoes from people we know—or people was have known in the past—and especially from people we’ve loved.

I value the subjects of this book and respect the thought and effort the author put into the project. I also appreciate that I'm walking away with a couple of very interesting and challenging questions of myself. However, the first third of the book was a total slog. The middle eventually drew me but it was hard work. It wasn't until the final third that it extracted any real interest in me, and it's fairly impressive that the author still managed to leave a genuine impression on me in such a small portion of the book.

I think it would have been more interesting for the author to have edited all those letters, emails, notes, and texts from her friend and turn it into an actual book of poetry--while still offering their own explication of the text. I'd much rather read that version. Unfortunately, I likely won't recommend it to anyone.

Other People's Words was a great reflection on loss and the intermix of lifelong friendships. Soep addresses how words aren't "owned" by one person, but rather they are borrowed from those closest to us.
I didn't love the Bakhtin references and think the book could have been great without it.

📚 2024 #32: “Other People's Words” by Lissa Soep

📕 This book is about deep platonic love and loss. Soep shares the stories of two cherished friends that are taken away; one slowly and one suddenly and unexpectedly. They live on not only through memory, but letters written, voicemails left, and favorite phrases uttered in conversations. Soep beautifully demonstrates the connection language has with our every experience, able to bring us back to another place and time -- and even to ones we've lost.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5: I loved the varied formats of text in this book: Soep's commentary, passages from books and letters, conversations held over email and text. It's clear Soep and her friends have a huge appreciation of language, which makes reading their words particularly moving. Seeing the decline of language in one of the friends was heartbreaking. This book made me want to send handwritten letters to all my friends and spend my mornings filling journals.

🤓 You should read this if you're grieving the loss of someone or simply want to read a beautiful story of change and aging.

🥰 Thank you to NetGalley and Spiegel & Grau for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC via NetGalley.

Wow, this book caught me completely by surprise. It’s hard to put into words exactly how this book impacted me. The relationships written about throughout the book are heartwarming and heart wrenching at the same time. Through writing about Bakhtin’s (who I hadn’t heard of before reading this book!) philosophy, Soep delves into other people’s words and the way they show up over and over again. This is something I had thought about in the past and am now looking forward to reading Bakhtin’s work and more by Soep in the future. I highly recommend this thoughtful and hopeful book!

This book took me a few attempts to get going. I'm not entirely sure what finally made it click but on the fourth attempt I finally made it past the first ten pages and was hooked. Soep reflects on the conversations, both verbal and written, she has had with friends who have passed as well as those they left behind. Intermingled with the vignette-style memories are snippets of conversational theory from the philosopher Bakhtin, which Soep uses to reframe past communications in order to imagine the voices of the dead to continue speaking.

The short chapters reminded me of little notes, as if Soep jotted down memories or ideas as they came to her and then built them out. The chapters are chronological but as it is a reflection on communication in the past there are many references to past conversations, letters etc. Revisiting past communications in such depth as a way of coping with grief was a new idea to me and one that I would like to explore further. This will be a tough read for anyone whose grief is still fairly new, but I would highly recommend it for anyone who is currently in the anticipatory grief stages or who has had some time to process the initial stages of grief and feels ready to explore their relationship to the person they have lost in a new way.

I have deducted one star only because it took me a few attempts to get started.

Thank you, Net Galley, for the chance to review this book. Right from the first paragraph, it felt like this reader was in a conversation with the writer. It was very relatable. The author's language was poetic and rather genius. I reread parts to dive into how this book about grief made me feel seen and heard. It came from such a deep wound that I found it rather healing. I will be getting this to gift to loved ones and keep a copy for myself to reference. On my travel bucket list is to find that telephone booth in Japan. I am hesitant to begin another read and want this one to linger longer.

A thoughtful and poignant reflection on deep friendship and what it means when close friends die. Lissa Soep recounts two of her closest friendships, one that ended in a friend's slow decline, the other in a tragic and accidental death. She grapples with what it means those close to these friends to carry their memories and their words after death.

An interesting book about how our loved ones influence our lives and how even after they are gone they are with us. A great vision of how we are all connected through the words and unspoken language we speak to one another every day. How words can be a memory of time passed. This book comforted me in my grief while mourning the loss of a loved one. A great insightful read with an interesting story.

"Between languages, there was a wordless territory where everything was still unnamed, and, therefore, nearly eternal. Meaning was all there was".
~ Ingrid Rojas Contreras, The Man Who Could Move Clouds.

'Other People's Words' is a beautifully written book that's thought-provoking, heartbreaking and also heartwarming.

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"Soon, there was that feeling - nervous, gorgeous, and rare: the sense of choosing and being chosen".
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"If we could not write, would our tongues spell out sentences in each other's mouths?"
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"Inside our words, we are never without companions".
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Lissa Soep reminds us of the power of words, spoken and written to speak with and through loss. She uses examples from her own life to color how we lose cognitive processes, relationships, the death of a loved one, and the struggle to understand and find the "loophole" to be able to reimagine how stories can end. She introduces us, reintroduces if you were familiar already, to kaze no dnewa, the wind telephone, and Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, his life and writings. Both serve to provide a framework for the lives she invites us into as their loss and tragedy unfold.
Her reflection is raw at times and it includes honestly sharing her feelings, letting us be there in real-time with reflection, texts, and notes that were present when the relationship between two couples was beginning and she and her spouse attempted to maintain one with the other which had failed. Reading about the physical and mental factors that contributed to that couple not making it gives us pause on what it means to be with someone for better or worse, and in sickness and in health.

Other People's Words is a gorgeous examination of friendship, connection, and the power of language. It's especially poignant at a time when loneliness is rampant and grief is everywhere you turn. Thank you, Lissa, for sharing these stories with the world.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for the ARC!

4.5: A book focused on friendship, grief, love, and heartbreak. Felt like this author was really just exploring relationships as things change and people get older and evolve.

I didn’t love all the comparisons to famous academics, but I loved the way the author wrote about the way we hold onto things, long after they’ve changed into something unrecognizable. I did love the way she wrote about our words and what they reflect. Sweet and heartbreaking book about the reality of change and getting older.

Thanks to netgalley for the early access!

Interesting book with male and female friendships at the center. I was a bit bored with the story but it seems like it would be a good read for another time because I normally devour books like this. Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.