Perdita: On Loss

UC Berkeley sociology professor Riley (Microverses) recalls loving and losing his wife, Emanuela, in this wrenching memoir. Addressing the couple’s teenage son, Eamon, directly, Riley divides the account into three sections that touch on his life before, during, and after his relationship with Emanuela, who died of colon cancer in 2022. Grief, Riley writes, “imposes a heavy responsibility on the griever. One of the most important responsibilities for me is to tell Emanuela’s story: the story of her short, beautiful life.” In the book’s middle section, he does just that, covering the couple’s first encounter at a Roman research library in 1998, their marriage in 2000, and their experiences of parenthood, frequently stopping along the way to elaborate on Emanuela’s love of role-playing video games or her favorite foods. Through rich description (“I have traversed, so far in this volume, the foothills of my losses; what stands before me is a massive peak,” Riley writes at the end of book’s first section) and palpable emotion (Emanuela’s mundane possessions are “suddenly... infused with a kind of sacred charisma” after her death), Riley succeeds in his goal of capturing the precise character of his marriage for Eamon’s benefit. It’s an intimate and indelible elegy. (Oct.)