"What We Lose" by Zinzi Clemmons

I read What We Lose in one afternoon. For a slow reader like myself who gets distracted a lot and has to take multiple breaks while reading, this is a testament to how good this book truly is. What We Lose is deeply autobiographical with the central theme of grief. Thandi lost her mother to cancer and this is the story of how she coped, stayed sane and learned to press on.

Along the way, Clemmons tackles other issues in her novel. A big one is her inability to fit in with any racial/ethnic group. Born to a light-skinned South African mother and a light-skinned African-American father, she has trouble fitting in both in the US and in South Africa. Clemmons also candidly - sometimes too candidly it seems - writes about her sex life. Her book includes her thoughts on crime in South Africa, on fear of flying, on the controversy surrounding Winnie Mandela and on wives and girlfriends of serial killers. She quotes poetry and books by Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela. The novel includes photos, drawings and graphs. It reads like a diary without a linear timeline. The narrative jumps around from the present, to her childhood, to college years, to high school and back to present. But it is not difficult to keep up and I never got lost in the narrative. She also has heartbreakingly lyrical passages about the loss of her mother that are more poetry than prose.

My mother is dead. But I still see her. But I still feel her. I can still hear her voice, even right now as I am speaking to you.
But she is dead.
When I look at this picture of her on the beach, I can feel sun on my skin. I can hear the way she spoke to me.
But she is gone (p. 121).

A nice surprise for me was the fact that part of the book is set in the college town where I live and work. Even though she never names the place, it is easy to recognize the location and the school.

When I finish a novel, I either immediately get rid of it or keep it for re-reading. This one is definitely staying. I will have to revisit it and mine it for more nuggets of wisdom. Despite the fact that this is a sad story about learning to live with loss, the overall message is one of hope. She copes, she makes mistakes, she does whatever is necessary to stay sane and survive. But she presses on, she lives with the hole left by her mother's absence and writes this beautiful book.

I've amazed myself with how well I've learned to live around her absence. This void is my constant companion no matter what I do. Nothing will fill it, and it will never go away (p. 206).

5 out of 5 stars. Trigger warnings: grief/loss and candid portrayal of sex.