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Minerva’s Owl
A moving, deeply honest account of great love and loss – this small book is a tender companion for those who are grieving.
After “nine days in which we thought you would recover and then eight days in palliative care,” Carol Matthew’s husband of more than forty years passed away suddenly. Through the shock and grief that follows, Carol writes and writes, with love and anger and honesty and heartbreak, as she comes to an understanding of bereavement as not the end, but as a stage of married love.
The owl of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, spreads its wings only at twilight. In Minerva’s Owl, Carol Matthews finds solace in reflecting back on a marriage, a life, a person – in lyrical prose, in devastating honesty, and with hard-won insight.
Structured in six sections – grieving, longing, belonging, mourning, cleaving, and surviving – Minerva’s Owl offers not a step-by-step guide to grief, but an understanding companion to walk with the reader through dark days. Part grief memoir, part love story, this book is a gift for anyone who has lost someone they loved. This new second edition of the book provides a new epilogue that reflects on loss more than a decade later, and a new introduction from Maria Coffey, author of Fragile Edge: Loss on Everest.
Minervas Owl is more than a tender handbook for the grieving a brimming saga of a courtship and marriage it reminds us to attend well to the art of living
Carol Matthews has given anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one a generous gift insight into the roller coaster that is grieving and the lived experience that demonstrates that life is still worth living
This is the best book on grief mourning and loss that I have ever read and believe me I have read a few
Although Matthews explores the profundity of grieving she balances this raw pain with new ways of seeing As her subtitle suggests she views life after Mikes death not as widowhood but as a distinct phase of our continuing marriage One in which we are apart and yet together
The process of being authentic towards death could not be narrated better From recollection and actuality she faces a potential future where her Minervas owl could once more open its wings and continue living yet with a deeper understanding of life and accepting oneself as a mortal being
Carol Matthews Minervas Owl is an eloquent and emotionally engaging account of her early years as a widow seeking and finding tiny points of light within a huge surround of darkness and shadow Her calm voice offers the reader her most intimate wise and thoughtful company
Carol Matthews has done the remarkable Of the numerous books that have been written about loss Matthews has given us an original startling and deeply thoughtprovoking work There is an intimacy to her writing that invites the reader in almost as an eavesdropper What we hear are our own thoughts and questions What we are left with is a sense of peace the kind that comes with the knowledge that even in the darkest places we are not alone
Full of hope and tenderness
Carol Matthews has given anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one a generous gift insight into the roller coaster that is grieving and the lived experience that demonstrates that life is still worth living
This is the best book on grief mourning and loss that I have ever read and believe me I have read a few
Although Matthews explores the profundity of grieving she balances this raw pain with new ways of seeing As her subtitle suggests she views life after Mikes death not as widowhood but as a distinct phase of our continuing marriage One in which we are apart and yet together
The process of being authentic towards death could not be narrated better From recollection and actuality she faces a potential future where her Minervas owl could once more open its wings and continue living yet with a deeper understanding of life and accepting oneself as a mortal being
Carol Matthews Minervas Owl is an eloquent and emotionally engaging account of her early years as a widow seeking and finding tiny points of light within a huge surround of darkness and shadow Her calm voice offers the reader her most intimate wise and thoughtful company
Carol Matthews has done the remarkable Of the numerous books that have been written about loss Matthews has given us an original startling and deeply thoughtprovoking work There is an intimacy to her writing that invites the reader in almost as an eavesdropper What we hear are our own thoughts and questions What we are left with is a sense of peace the kind that comes with the knowledge that even in the darkest places we are not alone
Full of hope and tenderness
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Details
Dimensions:
172 Pages
7in * 4.5in *
1.00gr
Published:
May 18, 2026
Publisher:
ISBN:
9781997534143
Book Subjects:
Language:
eng
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