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

I talked about this book on my small YouTube channel.

Transcript:

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.

The audiobook, read by Soep herself, is smooth and moving.

A very sweet remembrance of the author’s friend and a wonderful testament to the importance of friends, especially as family.

Thanks Siegel & Grau by Spotify Audiobooks for the ALC!

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.

What happens to someone's words when they are no longer here? Their words live on in the people who loved them. Good narration and written with love.

Besides the emotional setting of the book, a parameter that kept me going was the writing style. The authors coaxes through the incidents of life, parallelly weaving in elements of great authors and their words. Following the life of 4 close friends and how they coped with the loss of one of their own leaving this world, followed by growing old as they became more alive in the author's words.

Here's something I encountered in the first half of the book that got me hooked:
"The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it.
Hoping, that others may then dream along with you
And in this way, memory and imagination and language combine
to make spirits in the head - that's often what it felt like"
- Lissa Soep

Thanks for the Digital ARC @netgalley @spiegelandgrau @lissasoep
Genre: #nonfiction #memoir
#OtherPeoplesWords #NetGalley

Other People's Words is a poignant journey through friendship, grief, and love through shared language. Words carry meaning we create together and Lissa Soep shows us how the words we say and write can carry forward beyond the moment, living in memories and documents beyond the finite life of the person who produced them. From moments of hearing the eco of a loved one in a phrase, to seeing the influence of a favorite poem on a friend's writing in a letter from years ago, to intentionally using gifted words from a therapist to get passed the emotion laden ones that carry hurt and pain in a relationship, this book goes through example after example of times words carried a lot more than a straightforward common meaning. I very much enjoyed this opportunity to reflect on how language is personal and carries shades of the network of minds near and far removed that have used it. I listened to the audiobook and I very much recommend it - I think it added something to listen to the author's words (and the words of her network) through her own voice. I particularly enjoyed the rhythm of hearing meaningful punctuation read aloud while discussing how the punctuation was carrying a lot of meaning in emails, giving the listener build in time to meditate on the meaning. Five stars! Bring tissues!

3.5 ⭐️
A book that tells the stories about our deep connections with one another and how we cling to those connections after someone is dead. Soep tells the stories about two close people in her life who died and how their loved ones clung to messages, videos, and letters as a means to cling to their loved one. I appreciated a lot of her perspectives both as someone who was impacted by the loss and as someone who has a level of being removed and seeing the romantic partners experience loss.

This tells a powerful tale about aging and loss. I have often wondered whether it is worse to lose someone dramatically and unexpectedly or slowly over time. I do not think that there is a clear answer, but this book gives perspective to both.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for giving me an advanced audio copy of this book in return for my honest review.

5 ⭐️

This was beautiful. Lissa's writing was transparent, relatable, and stunning. I truly cared for the people in this book despite not knowing them in person. This was a phenomenal book exploring relationships, connections, friendships, and how they evolve over time. This was truly one of the best books I've read so far this year.

I don't think I would've enjoyed this book nearly as much, given the content, if it had had a narrator other than the author. Thankfully Lisa Soep's voice put the meaning behind her words. This memoir contained beautiful writings on the topics of friendship and grief.