Abigail Thomas

The author of An Actual Life and Getting Over Tom shares an intimate memoir about marriage and motherhood, looking back on a life of love and mistakes. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

Some True Stories from a Life

Safekeeping

Presents an uplifting memoir about the author's life after the devastating loss of her husband, changes in a once-platonic friendship, her daughter's illness, and the death of a beloved dog.

A Memoir

What Comes Next and How to Like It

When Abigail Thomas's husband, Richard, was hit by a car, it destroyed his short-term memory and consigned him to permanent brain trauma. He had been taking their dog, Harry, out for a walk, and Harry had come home alone. Subject to rages, terrors, and hallucinations, Rich must live the rest of his life in an institution. He has no memory of what he did the hour, the day, the year before. This tragedy is the ground on which Abigail had to build a new life rather than abandon her husband. How she built that life is a story of great courage and great change, of moving to a small country town, of a new family composed of three dogs, knitting and friendship, of facing down guilt and discovering gratitude. It is also about her relationship with Rich, a man who lives in the eternal present, and the eerie poetry of his often uncanny perceptions. This wise, plain-spoken, beautiful book enacts the truth Abigail discovered in the five years since the accident: You might not find meaning in disaster, but you might, with effort, make something useful of it. Forced to adapt to a life alone, Abigail finds solace at home, discovering that friends, family and dogs (Carolina, Harry and Rosie) can reshape a life of chaos into one that, while wrenchingly sad, makes sense - a life full of its own richness and beauty.

A Three Dog Life

Thinking about Memoir

With her own special brand of delicate, elliptical, and humorous fiction, Abigail Thomas offers another extraordinary visit with people she knows far better than they know themselves. There's Walter, newly abandoned by his wife; there's Edith, a fiftyish virgin; there's Bunny, taking care of her mother and her mother's boyfriend; and there's Belle, whose married lover dies in the hallway wearing her dead husband Herb's pajama top. Blindly, they encounter one another in ways the reader recognizes are profound even as the characters themselves are unaware. The genius and the art in this collection derives from the possibility that these ships might actually find each other by daylight. If only these four could get together--they'd be so good for each other. "Written with an expert touch, and a wise and tender sensibility. The effect is subtle, strong, and comic."--Charles Baxter, author of BELIEVERS and BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE; "It's hard to think she is capable of writing anything that isn't immediately engaging and a joy to read. Probably someone should publish her shopping lists."--Elizabeth Berg, author of TALK BEFORE SLEEP. A BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB SELECTION

Herb's Pajamas

In 1960, two young people, Buddy and Virginia, who married because of an unexpected pregnancy, struggle to cope with financial strain, parenthood, and their own relationship during the second summer after their wedding

An Actual Life

A collection of stories about women of all ages who love not wisely but too well, and find themselves caught up in romances that descend quickly from the sublime to the ridiculous, focuses on how women, their self-images, and the men with whom they fall in love intertwine in such complicated ways

Getting Over Tom

Una Vida de Tres Perros

In 1960, two young people, Buddy and Virginia, who married because of an unexpected pregnancy, struggle to cope with financial strain, parenthood, and their own relationship with each other during the second summer after their wedding. By the author of Getting Over Tom.

Abigail Thomas

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