Planet Claire

(Hardback)

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Description

Planet Claire is the story of the untimely death of the author's wife and a candid account of the following year of madness and grief. With Claire's death, Jeff Porter tries to imagine life without her but struggles with the bewilderment that follows. Like Max Porter's novel Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, this is an unpredictably funny account of heartbreak, as if to say there's something about the magnitude of loss that troubles even earnestness.

Reviews

The pleasure is in the circling intelligence of the memoirist, each gyre bringing us closer to this very specific, endearing individual's life experience and his love for Claire. Paradoxical as it sounds, this book about death and grief is charming, humorous, poignant, and vital.
--Phillip Lopate, author of To Show and to Tell

Planet Claire left me awestruck. I don't know how he did it, but on every page of this incredible book, Jeff Porter manages to convey devastating sadness while also being delightful company. His grief does double duty as an almost otherworldly sort of introspection, pulling the reader into a continuum in which time, space, love, loss, art, and nature constantly play off one another until they become one another. This is not just the best grief memoir I've read in years, it's one the best memoirs, period.
--Meghan Daum, author of The Problem with Everything

Author Bio

JEFF PORTER is the author of Lost Sound: The Forgotten Art of Radio Storytelling, the memoir Oppenheimer Is Watching Me, and coeditor of Understanding the Essay. His essays and articles have appeared in several magazines and literary reviews, including the Antioch Review, Northwest Review, Shenandoah, Missouri Review, Hotel Amerika, Wilson Quarterly, Contemporary Literature, and the Seneca Review. For the better part of his career, he taught English at the University of Iowa. He loves cameras, dogs, and guitars--though not in that order. He splits his time between Milwaukee and Tucson. His latest work is Planet Claire: Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers. For more information visit, www.jeff-porter.com.