Latest news with #GeraldineBrooks
ABC News
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Geraldine Brooks on her memoir Memorial Days and travelling to Flinders Island to do 'the work of grief'
In 2019, Geraldine Brooks was sitting at her desk at home in Martha's Vineyard, working on her sixth novel, Horse, when the phone rang. On the line was a doctor from a hospital in Washington DC, calling to say her husband, journalist and author Tony Horwitz, had collapsed in the street. "I'm expecting her to say, 'And now he is in surgery,' or, 'We're keeping him for observation,'" Brooks tells ABC TV's Compass. "And instead, she says, 'He's dead.' Just like that." Horwitz — a Pulitzer Prize-winner, like his wife — was midway through a busy tour promoting his latest book, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide. Brooks couldn't understand how a man so fit and full of vitality had died so suddenly. "I just couldn't assimilate it." She wanted to howl in pain but feared that if she lost control, she might never regain it. In her new memoir, Memorial Days, she describes how, from that day on, she put on an "endless, exhausting performance" to give the impression she was fine. Eventually, however, Brooks realised she couldn't go on pretending. "I felt like this love had not been acknowledged by the capacious grief that it deserved. That's when I thought of Flinders Island," she says. In 2023, Brooks travelled to the remote Tasmanian island to confront her feelings, a cathartic experience she recounts in Memorial Days. And now, two years later, she returns to Flinders Island with ABC TV's Compass to discuss the important work of grief. Now one of Australia's most celebrated authors, Brooks began her journalism career at the Sydney Morning Herald. After covering the Franklin Dam controversy in the early 80s, she got a scholarship to Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, where she met a fellow journalist by the name of Tony Horwitz. "I was initially attracted to him because he was such an idealist. He had this high moral seriousness and a great sense of humour," Brooks recalls. The couple married in France in 1984 and moved to Sydney for a brief stint, before life again took a different direction. "Out of the blue, the Wall Street Journal called and said, 'Would I like to become the Middle East correspondent?'" The answer was yes, and an adrenaline-filled decade followed, reporting on geopolitical crises throughout the region. As foreign correspondents, Brooks and Horwitz often shared joint bylines, earning the tag 'Hobro' in the Wall Street Journal newsroom. "We were always getting calls in the middle of the night [to cover a story] … We lived with a duffel bag packed with crazy things; I had a chador and a bulletproof vest. "We often worked on different sides of the same story — [if] he was in Iraq, I would be in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War and vice versa." Brooks eventually gave up journalism to write fiction, publishing the bestselling plague novel, Year of Wonders, in 2001 and winning a Pulitzer in 2006 for her US Civil War novel, March. She and Horwitz remained in the US, raising their two sons, Nathaniel and Bizu, in an 18th-century mill house on Martha's Vineyard, an island off the New England coast. "Their relationship is probably one of the all-time love stories," Bizu says. "More than anything, [he] revered and respected and loved how smart, intelligent and passionate she was about everything." Brooks first visited Flinders Island with Horwitz in 2000 to research a novel. Together they'd toured the island, marvelling at its natural beauty. They were confronted by its dark history too. At Wybalenna, they viewed the unmarked graves of Aboriginal people who died on the island after being forcibly removed from Tasmania in the 1800s. Brooks ended up abandoning the project, but she was taken with the island and toyed with the idea of one day buying a block there. When she returned in 2023, it was in very different circumstances. "For three years after his death, I'd been pretending to be normal. And I wasn't normal. I wasn't right … I wasn't myself," she says. "You're supposed to work through denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, and I'd vaulted all the intermediate steps and pretended that I'd arrived at acceptance. You can't do that. "I needed to go back and work my way through those steps." For Brooks, Flinders Island offered "time and space … to do the business of mourning". "Grief counselling would've been one way," she acknowledges. "But I thought, 'Well, what do writers do? Writers write.'" She rented a shack overlooking a goblet-shaped bay, gazing out at the granite outcrop known as Mount Killiecrankie. There, alone and without distraction, Brooks returned to the worst day of her life to work through her grief. "I would get up in the morning and … do the work, write my thoughts, and then when I realised that I had a cramp and hadn't moved in hours, I'd go for a walk." She found solace in the rocky, windswept landscape. "I fell in love with granite," she says. "The rocks on Flinders Island are in these sculptural shapes. They're great works of art, monumental sculptures that completely moved me in the way art moves you." She also found another kind of comfort in her solitude. "I realised I wasn't alone. I was with Tony. I was able to be with him night and day. And it was wonderful." Brooks fell into a routine on the island, ending each day with a swim in the ocean. "At first it was just a swim. But as I got deeper and deeper into the work, I realised that there was something almost ceremonial about it," she says. "It became this gift to myself to be fully immersed and completely alone in my skin, in the water, like some kind of aquatic creature. And it felt cleansing and healing." Brooks felt a connection between her daily swim and the mikvah, a purifying bathing ritual that had formed part of her conversion to Judaism when she married Horwitz three decades earlier. Horwitz's Judaism was cultural rather than religious or spiritual. "If he had died and I was an Orthodox Jew, there would've been a very set road map to travel, a pathway into and out of grief," Brooks says. "There are strict rules. The first one, I think, is incredibly insightful: in the first hours after somebody experiences a loss like this, you don't even offer them condolences. They're in a state of 'stupefying grief' is how it's put. All you do is help them. "It's only after the burial that the grieving and condolences start." Known as Shiva, this formal mourning period lasts for seven days. "You sit and let people come and talk about the deceased. You don't bathe, you cover the mirrors, you're taken out of time," Brooks says. In her travels, Brooks has observed similar mourning rituals in other cultures, but found these customs largely absent from Western society. "I had no idea what a brutal, broken system it is when somebody dies suddenly far from home among strangers," she says. "I wasn't allowed to see his body. I got to Washington thinking that I could be with him and hold his hand and say goodbye. And I get to the hospital, and it's not allowed. They just show you a photograph and it's horrible. It wasn't until days later when he was finally released to the funeral home that I was finally able to see him." Alone on Flinders Island, Brooks found herself instinctively adopting the practices of Shiva. "I realised, I'd been swimming every day, but I hadn't had a shower, and there was no mirror in the shack," she says. "I was making it up as I went along but finding my own way to some of these things that have been enshrined for millennia in old religious practices." During her stay on Flinders Island, revisiting that terrible day in her mind, Brooks felt the howl of grief return. "I felt it coming back and I let it come," she says. "And after that, I realised that the time had done what it needed to do, and I was ready to go home." Brooks will never stop grieving for Horwitz, but she's found a kind of peace. "What I have been able to do … [is] set down that life I'd expected to have — growing old with him — and just accept that that life is gone. I ain't getting that back. I have to make the most of the life that I do have." Writing Memorial Days was instrumental to this process. "When you're in grief, the best thing you can do is tell your story … It wasn't until I wrote my story that I was able to feel like a normal human being again," she says. Watch Geraldine Brooks. Grief, A Love Story on Compass on Sunday night at 6:30pm on ABC TV, or stream now on iview.
ABC News
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Coming up: Geraldine Brooks — Grief, a love story - ABC Religion & Ethics
One of our most cherished authors, Geraldine Brooks, goes to Flinders Island to finally grieve the sudden death of her husband. As a convert to Judaism, she ponders how other religions use rituals to help with healing. Coming up 6:30pm Sunday 30th March on ABC TV and anytime on ABC iview. Posted 17m ago 17 minutes ago Tue 3 Jun 2025 at 12:59am
New York Times
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Geena Davis Can't Count How Many Times She's Reread Zola
In an email interview, she talked about the inspiration behind 'The Girl Who Was Too Big for the Page,' and how 'The Accidental Tourist' changed her life. SCOTT HELLER What's the last great book you read? 'Horse,' by Geraldine Brooks, weaves the art world, the horse racing world and what it means to be human into a thrilling tapestry. What book have you recommended the most over the years? 'Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,' by Susan Faludi. As someone who's focused on creating equitable representation onscreen for women and girls, this book had a strong impact on me. Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? Memoirs and biographies. I find stories about other people's real-life experiences and challenges so engrossing. They teach me a lot and broaden my perspective and understanding of the world. One recent favorite was 'Educated,' by Tara Westover. The story — and Tara's resilience — broke my heart. What kind of reader were you as a child? I read everything I could get my hands on, often under the covers with a flashlight. I used novels as a way to learn, to escape and to travel without leaving my little town in Massachusetts. I particularly loved 'The Cricket in Times Square,' by George Selden. The idea of a cricket giving concerts in New York City enchanted me. Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain? My favorite book of all time is 'L'Assommoir,' by Émile Zola, and I adore Gervaise Macquart. She's such a strong character, and every time I read the book, I want her life to be different — I want her to have all the opportunities she's denied as a member of the Parisian underclass. And as far as antiheroes, while I wouldn't say her husband is my favorite antihero, I would say that he's the perfect foil for Gervaise's dreams. Zola is such a stunning writer. I can't tell you how many times I've read and reread his work. Do you have a favorite memoir by an actor? I don't, but I do have a favorite biography — 'Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor,' by Simon Callow. Charles Laughton is my absolute favorite actor. He was one of the true greats, and being able to gain insight into his life through this book meant a lot to me. What was the specific motivation to try your hand at a children's book? I've always loved drawing and writing, so it's been in my mind for a long time. Then, suddenly, the idea of a character knowing that they live in a book came to me. As a child, I always felt too tall, like I was taking up more than my share of space, and I tried to shrink myself to fit into the amount of space I imagined I should occupy. In writing 'The Girl Who Was Too Big for the Page,' I wanted to reach out to kids who feel like I did back then — like they don't fit in — and reassure them that there is room for them in the world. I want them to realize that they should take up as much space as they need. Often new authors work with illustrators. Was it a must that you did the art for this book, too? I've always drawn and painted, and I saw my characters so clearly in my mind's eye that it seemed natural that I would draw them. And luckily for me, my publisher loved what I created. What's the best book you've ever received as a gift? When Hugh Laurie and I played Stuart Little's parents in the movie 'Stuart Little,' Hugh decided to give me a copy of his hilarious book, 'The Gun Seller.' But since he knew I was once a foreign-exchange student in Sweden, Hugh gave me a Swedish copy! (The book was called 'Skottpengar' there.) The gift truly delighted me. I love Hugh's writing in any language. Of all the characters you've played across different media, which role felt to you the richest — the most novelistic? I've actually been in five movies based on books, but Muriel Pritchett from 'The Accidental Tourist' was definitely the most novelistic. Muriel, who first appeared in the beautiful book by Anne Tyler, is complicated and unique and felt so three-dimensional on the page. I remember reading this book aloud to Jeff Goldblum while we were shooting 'The Fly' together and he was getting his extensive makeup done. As I read, I started hating whoever was going to get to play the part of Muriel in the movie version — which it was clear there would be. But then it was me! And it completely changed my life.
Washington Post
05-02-2025
- Washington Post
Geraldine Brooks delivers a rich account of marriage and mourning
When, without warning, Geraldine Brooks's husband, Tony Horwitz, collapsed on a Chevy Chase sidewalk and then died at a D.C. hospital, age 60, she felt cheated in numerous ways. She was not with him, so strangers comforted him in his last moments. She herself was alone when she got the news, delivered by an impatient resident on duty in the ER. She rushed to Washington from Martha's Vineyard, where they lived, only to learn that his body had been whisked away to the medical examiner, and she was not allowed to follow. Her older son heard of his father's demise from a friend before she could reach him. Her younger son was at boarding school, and she had to listen to his sobs down the phone line without being able to offer a comforting hug. Most of all, as she writes in her new memoir, 'Memorial Days,' Brooks was robbed of 'the life I would have had, the life I had counted on having. Life with the sunset-facing rocking chairs, growing old with Tony beside me.'
