The Grief of Others

Leah Hager Cohen Press Reviews

An engrossing and revealing look at a family sinking beneath the weight of a terrible secret. Cohen writes about difficult subjects with unfailing compassion and insight. - Tom Perrotta, author of 'Little Children'

With gorgeous prose, Cohen skillfully takes us from past to present and back again as she explores the ramifications of family loss, grief and longing. - Kirkus

Cohen is one of our foremost chroniclers of the mundane complexities, nuanced tragedies and unexpected tendernesses of human connection. - New York Times Book Review

In this subtle portrait of family life she shows the maddening arithmetic of marriage, the useless attempts to balance the equation. - New York Times

Part of the novel's pathos lies in its ability to offer its characters a level of perceptive acuity and sympathetic attention they cannot offer one another ... The book's brilliance lies in moments like this one, these shards of devastating insight. - San Francisco Chronicle

Cohen's stunning writing and ruthless, beautiful magnification of soul- crushing sorrow that threatens the Ryries' day-to-day family life mesmerizes, wounds, and possibly even heals her readers. - Library Journal

With this incredibly moving commentary, Cohen has secured a place in the lineup of today's great writers. - Bookpage

Cohen's new novel is a perceptive, absorbing drama about the complex bonds of the modern American family and the treacherous paradox of the way we live now. Somehow, the more open and flexible we try to become as spouses and parents, the more emotional risks we take-and the more secrets we keep. I love how deeply Cohen delves into the hearts of all her characters, bringing them fully alive, from their most heroic strivings to their darkest flaws. -- Julia Glass, author of 'The Widower's Tale'

How does a family transcend its own pain? How do the secrets we keep shape our lives and the lives of those we love? In this gracefully written, elegantly structured novel, Leah Hager Cohen has created an indelible cast of characters whose story is at once wrenching and redemptive. This is a beautiful book. -- Dani Shapiro, author of 'Family History'

A gorgeous, absorbing, intricately told tale of one family on the brink of collapse, as well as an intimate exploration of art and its place in our lives. Cohen expertly juggles six characters and all their needs, yearning, wounds, and secrets with tremendous skill and even more important-deep and tender compassion. She is a masterly writer on every level. -- Lily King, author of 'Father of the Rain'

A delicate, haunting, and lovely, and very difficult to leave on the shelf. -- Susanna Daniel, author of 'Stiltsville'

A wise and compassionate novel that looks frankly at the ways members of a family can wound and betray each other, even when trying to do just the opposite. Readers will be tempted to vilify Ricky, but she's much too complex for that. Despite the lies, subterfuges, and silences these characters inflict on one another, there are no villains here, just a family trying to carry on. -- Suzanne Berne, author of 'The Ghost at the Table'

At once compact and sweeping. Cohen never strikes a false note in relating the complicated emotions of her characters. She has created a world both universal and particular. She illuminates all the ways it is glorious to be burdened with full-fledged humanity in the vast universe. -- Robb Forman Dew, author of 'The Evidence Against Her'

Leah Hager Cohen writes like a dream and effortlessly inhabits each of her characters. She's not much known here yet, but lovers of family relationship literary fiction, such as Anne Tyler fans, need look no further. -- John Harding - Daily Mail

Cohen shows how people are warped by things that they choose to keep secret; her writing is wise and incredibly moving. -- Kate Saunders - Times

The Grief of Others has a lyrical bent and is affecting in its examination of unresolved sorrow - The Age, Australia