Grief Memoirs Exploring Suicide Loss

Grief Memoirs Exploring Suicide Loss

This article relates to A Truce That Is Not Peace

Miriam Toews' memoir A Truce That Is Not Peace explores the grief behind the loss of a loved one to suicide, as the author tries to understand the deaths of her father and sister, about a decade apart from one another, through the act of writing. There have been many memoirs and other works of nonfiction centered around navigating grief, and plenty that specifically focus on the loss of a loved one to suicide, including the following.

Things in Nature Merely Grow (2025) by Yiyun Li

Li writes of her son James, who died by suicide in 2024, six years after her eldest son Vincent did the same. The memoir is not solely focused on grief, but on the facts of her sons' deaths, and more importantly, who they were in life, as well as how Li continues living in their absence.

Grief Is for People (2024) by Sloane Crosley

Crosley guides readers through a tough period of loss in her life, during which she was burglarized, and then, a month later, lost her closest friend to suicide. She weaves these separate events together to offer her unique perspective on the stages of grief, with honesty and her trademark humor.

We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade (2025) by Elyce Arons

Elyce Arons shares a heartfelt portrait of her friendship with Kate Spade, whom she met in college and co-founded a fashion company with in New York in the 1990s. Arons reflects on their closeness, the unseen moments in their journey creating the brand Kate Spade, and Spade's suicide in 2018.

The Guardians: An Elegy for a Friend (2012) by Sarah Manguso

The Guardians is a tribute to Manguso's friend Harris, written two years after he escaped from a psychiatric hospital and died by suicide. The story recounts Manguso's fellowship year in Rome, Harris's death, and the subsequent year—​during which time she was in mourning, but she also got married. With humor, the author examines the limitations of explanation when it comes to suicide and highlights the importance of imagination in overcoming difficult times.

Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide (2024) by Rachel Zimmerman

Zimmerman recounts her husband's suicide from a nearby bridge. As a journalist, she searched for answers, interviewing doctors, suicide researchers, and a man who survived jumping from the same bridge. Us, After explores domestic devastation, recovery, internal tension, shifting perspectives, motherhood, and secrets.

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This article relates to A Truce That Is Not Peace. It first ran in the October 22, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.