Nellie Hermann is a master of memory. In her harrowing debut novel The Cure for Grief, nine-year-old Ruby, the youngest of four and the only girl in the Bronstein family, lives through unfathomable loss. When a number of family members succumb to illness in the opening chapters, the book might initially read as over-dramatic (“Loss! Regret! Change!”). But rather than tell the story of Ruby’s life in strict linear fashion, Hermann carefully doles out memories from Ruby’s past, resulting in a story that is truer to the actual grieving process, as we tend to only allow ourselves to remember after time has passed. The novel quickly becomes more about Ruby’s learning to grieve than about the events she is going through. It is as though Hermann herself is becoming comfortable with the audience, allowing us to see behind the wall Ruby has constructed to deal with her grief.
Ruby is finishing college when we learn of a funeral that took place when she was in high school; this missing piece in the story of Ruby — the sound of dirt hitting the coffin as friends and family take up their shovels — reverberates throughout the rest of the novel. Difficult memories, as well as joyful ones, are held back. After we learn Ruby’s brother Nathan has a life-threatening illness, Hermann takes us back to the childhood games Ruby and Nathan played: “There was Raggedy Andy, when Nathan’s body would be a doll, limbs flailing, and Ruby would prop him up….‘I am Raggedy Andy,’ she would say, moving his jaw with her hand, his head leaning back against the couch….‘I can eat Cheerios! I’m hungry!’ Ruby would squeal, stuffing the cereal into his mouth.” It is through these moments that the characters become more than suffering individuals; with each memory the grief and the family become more familiar until we are left looking at the rubble with Ruby, feeling the pain as if it were our own.
Perhaps the most beautiful segments in the novel come when Ruby allows herself to be angry at God and to cry and scream. It is here that her father’s words come back to her and carry throughout the rest of the book: “Life is the highest good….Whenever it is possible, choose life.” This is not, Ruby comes to realize, just about keeping things alive, but about choosing to truly live the life you were given. Life keeps going, as beautiful and strange as it may be, and we can hope that this young author will keep going, and keep writing
Laura Farmer, a graduate of the Syracuse University MFA Program, has had fiction appear in The Iowa Review and other journals. She currently directs the Writing Studio at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa.
