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title: Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide

author: Linda Gray Sexton



genre: memoir

published: 2011

pages: 320

source: TLC Book Tours


first line: Sometimes, even my bones resonate with the melodies of my childhood.

rated: 4 out of 5






Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide is Linda Gray Sexton's heartfelt and emotional memoir.


Her mother was famous poet Anne Sexton. Linda is a successful writer herself and the prose in her memoir is achingly beautiful.



Linda's mother Anne suffered from severe depression and as a child she was witness to her mother's mental illness.
Linda was twenty one years old in 1974 when her mother committed suicide, after several attempts.

She loved her mother greatly, but Linda swore that she would not take on her mother's legacy of suicide and depression. She went on to marry and have children and become a writer. Throughout her life, Linda battled severe depression. As much as she fought it, her depression would return again and again.



Linda's memoir is intensely personal and emotional, and when I was done reading, I almost felt like I wanted to give her a hug. She shares her battle with depression and certain things she talks about are heart wrenching.
Her pain comes right off the pages.

I was curious to read Linda's memoir because I wanted to hear her take on suicide and depression. She shares her story here in a brave and insightful way.



Linda describes her suicide attempts as almost being beyond her control. Her depression was something she could not control or will away as much as she tried to.

A metaphor occurred to me that illustrated how I really felt: I was a soldier in a war zone, and I had to stay awake at my post. The enemy however, was no person. Instead it was depression, and, like a seductress, it sole up on me-just as sleep inevitably would, quietly pulling down the gray shades of my eyelids and making them as heavy as if they were weighted with the wet dirt of the grave. Increasingly, my world went into slow-motion and I spun out of myself, out of my head and heart, my face averted so no one would know the shame of what was happening to me and how I was giving in.


p.91

When Linda describes her first suicide attempt and how she was thinking about how she promised her children she would never do such a thing to herself as her mother had done, she brought tears to my eyes.

As if I could take back my terrible act, as if I could tighten the slack lips that could not kiss, mend the broken arms that could not hold, repair the promises cracked as old mirrors-all from this mother who, as her own mother before, had lost her grip on love.

p.9

After battling years of lingering depression and taking endless medications and going to therapy, Linda comes out a stronger person and gets some closure with her friends and family.




Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide is a moving and beautifully written memoir that is not to be missed.







Special thanks to Lisa over @ TLC Book Tours.
Click here to see other blogs on tour.




About the author:

Linda Gray Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1953. As the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Anne Sexton, she grew up in a home filled with books and words and an attention to language, and at an early age she, too, began to write. Afternoons were sometimes spent together with her mother, reading aloud from Anne’s favorite poems.

quoted from the authors website.