Making Toast: A Family Story - Tapa dura

'A painfully beautiful memoir' -- EL Doctorow. 'The story is about coping with grief, caring for children and creating an ad hoc family for as long as this particular configuration is required, but mostly it's a textbook on what constitutes perfect writing and how to be a class act' --Washington Post

'Rosenblatt brings the reader to tears, but with prose that is as restrained as it is evocative... sad, funny, brave and luminous' --LA Times

'Roger Rosenblatt means, I believe, to teach patience, love, a fondness for the quotidian, and a deftness for saving the lost moment - when faced with lacerating loss. These are brilliant lessons, fiercely-learned. But Rosenblatt comes to them and to us - suitably - with immense humility' --Richard Ford

When his daughter, Amy - a gifted doctor, mother, and wife - collapsed and died from an asymptomatic heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife, Ginny, left their home on Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren, six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one year-old James, known as Bubbies. Long past the years of nappies, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny - Boppo and Mimi to the kids - quickly re-accustomed themselves to the world of small children: bedtime stories, talking toys, non-stop questions, and non-sequential thought. Though still reeling from Amy's death, they carried on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tender-hearted children through the pains and confusions of grief. As he marvelled at the strength of his son-in-law, a surgeon, and the tenacity and skill of his wife, a former kindergarten teacher, Roger attended each day to 'the one household duty I have mastered'- preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child's liking. With the wit, heart, precision, and depth of understanding that has characterised his work, Roger Rosenblatt peels back the layers on this most personal of losses to create both a tribute to his late daughter and a testament to familial love. The day Amy died, Harris told Ginny and Roger, 'It's impossible'. Roger's story tells how a family makes the possible of the impossible.