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The co-op bookstore for avid readers
The End Is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2025 BY: The New Yorker - The New York Public Library - The Times Literary Supplement (London) Jill Bialosky, the poet behind the "tender, absorbing, and deeply moving memoir" (Entertainment Weekly) History of a Suicide, returns with a lyrical portrait of her mother's life, told in reverse order from burial to birth. Iris Yvonne Bialosky's death in March 2020 unleashed a torrent of emotions in her daughter Jill--grief, guilt, confusion, doubt. Now, with her poet's eye for detail and novelist's flair for storytelling, Jill Bialosky presents a profoundly moving elegy of her mother's life--telling Iris's story in reverse order. Starting with her mother's end and the physical/cognitive decline that led her to a care home, Bialosky traces Iris through her battle with depression, the tragedy of her youngest daughter's suicide, her strained and short second marriage, the death of her beloved first husband, which left her, at twenty-five years old, to care for three daughters under the age of three. We experience her joyful first marriage and busy teenage years, as well as the trauma of losing her own mother at just eight years old. As Iris grows younger and younger, she becomes a multidimensional woman and we come to understand her difficulties and triumphs, her neediness and her generosity, her pride and her despair. The End Is the Beginning is a brave and compassionate celebration of a woman's life and a window into a daughter's inextricable bond to her mother.
Book Details
- Publisher: Washington Square Press
- Publish Date: May 6th, 2025
- Pages: 272
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.50in - 5.60in - 1.20in - 0.80lb
- EAN: 9781451677928
- Categories: • Memoirs• Death, Grief, Bereavement• Death, Grief, Bereavement
About the Author
Bialosky, Jill: - Jill Bialosky is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently Asylum. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Atlantic, among others. She is the author of many novels, including The Deceptions, and several works of nonfiction including The End Is the Beginning, History of a Suicide, and Poetry Will Save Your Life. In 2015, Jill was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to the field of poetry. She lives in New York City. Find out more at JillBialosky.com.
Praise for this book
Praise for The End is the Beginning
"This richly sympathetic memoir deserves--and will surely find--a noted position in the history of mother-daughter books through the tender-hearted work of Jill Bialosky." --Vivian Gornick, critically acclaimed author of Fierce Attachments "Reading The End Is the Beginning is like opening a set of nesting dolls. With each lyrical, finely wrought chapter, Jill Bialosky takes us back in time, revealing era after era of her mother's life, from her final days to her girlhood. The End Is the Beginning is as smart and inventive as it is deeply moving. What we find at the center of the story, and the life, is love." --Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful "Be a lamp or a lifeboat or a ladder, Rumi says. This compassionate, lyrical and clear-eyed memoir is all three. A gift to anyone with a family." --Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of In Love
"This richly sympathetic memoir deserves--and will surely find--a noted position in the history of mother-daughter books through the tender-hearted work of Jill Bialosky." --Vivian Gornick, critically acclaimed author of Fierce Attachments "Reading The End Is the Beginning is like opening a set of nesting dolls. With each lyrical, finely wrought chapter, Jill Bialosky takes us back in time, revealing era after era of her mother's life, from her final days to her girlhood. The End Is the Beginning is as smart and inventive as it is deeply moving. What we find at the center of the story, and the life, is love." --Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful "Be a lamp or a lifeboat or a ladder, Rumi says. This compassionate, lyrical and clear-eyed memoir is all three. A gift to anyone with a family." --Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of In Love
Praise for Poetry Will Save Your Life "A lovely hybrid that blends [Bialosky's] coming-of-age story with engaging literary analysis." --The Washington Post "The book will open worlds. It is itself a life-saving book." --Will Schwalbe, New York Times bestselling author of The End of Your LIfe Book Club and Books for Living "Bialosky, a poet and novelist, sees her life broken up not by years, but through poems. Her moving memoir...shows how poetry can be a powerful tool for healing and understanding." --Real Simple
Praise for History of a Suicide "A searing elegy . . . This memoir reads like butter and cuts like a knife." --People "Eloquent, harrowing and wise, this memoir is brave and necessary." --San Francisco Chronicle "Tender, absorbing, and deeply moving...Bialosky writes so gracefully and bravely that what you're left with in the end is an overwhelming sense of love." --Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A)