Book Review: The Rules Of Inheritance

The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith is an insightful and beautifully written memoir that recounts the author’s adolescence and young adulthood as she struggles with the deaths of her parents. Told in a non-linear fashion using the stages of grief as a frame, Smith bounces back and forth in time adding a great level of interest and intrigue to the narrative. The author’s life unfolds for the reader through the moments that define her – from a rocky relationship begun in a bar at 18 to a trip to Europe with her father to uncover more about his World War II experience.

Smith’s writing is lovely and her observations on grief will resonate with anyone who has experienced loss.

“Grief is like another country, I realize. It’s a place,” (94) Smith writes. This is how I often felt after losing my cousin in 2007, like I had crossed a border into another land I had no idea existed before and with rules and norms that seemed so drastically different from what I had thought of the world only hours before.

After my cousin’s daughter passed away at the age of five last year, I began to feel like I was in an even smaller part of that country – the place for those who have loved a child that died.

I still sometimes think of myself as living in that different country, and the isolation that comes with that can be overwhelming – until you find people to talk to. As Smith also points out, you never know what’s going on behind the door of any given house on any given street, and the pain others are holding in.

Smith’s words give definition to so many of the feelings that accompany grief, these being only a few of those I took with me, with incredible honesty.

I realize that this book review is more of a personal response to Smith’s work than an editorial one, but this particular memoir resonated with me on that level, and I can’t necessarily separate my feelings about the tragedies in my own family over the last five years with Smith’s re-telling of her own.

Overall, The Rules of Inheritance is a beautiful memoir that I believe will leave an impact on all readers. I’m glad I found Smith’s work, and her captivating and touching story is well worth the journey.

This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.