ALL OF THIS

A successful writer and blogger explores how her husband’s untimely death forced a confrontation with her unfulfilling marriage and undefined sexuality.

By the time Woolf’s husband, Hal, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, their marriage was “in relative shambles—backs turned to each other in a bed big enough to keep us from touching.” Hal resented Woolf for her financial success, and Woolf resented Hal for the lies she felt compelled to tell him to keep the marriage “stable.” However, his illness made the author desperate. Rather than seeking a divorce, she found herself wanting Hal to live. For the remainder of his life, the author swore she would never leave his side, “the only marital vow I didn’t break.” The tumultuous mixture of love and hate complicated a difficult grieving process that began even before he died. As she revisited their shared past, she mourned her “inadequacies as a wife, as a partner” while also excoriating herself for passively accepting what she knew was a “toxic relationship.” After Hal’s death, Woolf found herself “performing” widowhood for others while gnawing on a powerful desire to “get fucked”—less to satiate her desire and more to fill the emptiness that had carried over from her marriage. An affair with a friend she’d met at Hal’s funeral provided some release. Then she signed up for Tinder and fell into a pattern of “one-night standing,” which eventually included both male and female partners as well as experiments in polyamory. In the process, Woolf learned that however traumatic, Hal’s death had actually prepared her for the short-term relationships she realized were what made her feel the most free and alive. By turns disturbing and profound, this intimate book about one woman’s path to personal liberation also reveals the sometimes-labyrinthine nature of the bonds that unite people in love and marriage.

A provocative and memorable work of autobiography.