Young Widow’s Book …
The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement
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- Hardback edition
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- Paperback edition
“This tender, funny and sometimes achingly painful book is not a book about death. It is a book about life. And, above all, a book about love.” - Lily Brett
“A quite remarkable memoir from an unusually talented Australian writer” - Stephanie Dowrick
“This book is both profound and universal. It is a truly remarkable piece of writing, which should be read by everyone who wants to understand the mysteries of love and death.” - Sydney Morning Herald
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Single at 32, married at 33, and widowed at 34.
A young professional woman finally meets the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with, only to discover that he is terminally ill. After her beloved John’s death from cancer, Virginia was faced with addressing the chronic rising damp problem in the house they had shared and, over her first year as a young widow, her house had to dry from the inside out – and so did Virginia. The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement is a wry and touching love story that plays with the parallels between our homes and ourselves.
Reviews: Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, marie claire (pick of the month), Sun-Herald, Good Reading, Australian Bookseller & Publisher,Australian Women’s Weekly
Book clubs / reading groups: Here are some useful questions to assist bookclub discussions.
Now available as an e-book!
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Virginia,
I’m looking forward to reading your book. I really like the title. I’m also looking forward to reading The Mother’s Group. I was always too scared to join one. I’m interested to hear that you worked with Lily Brett – she’s one of my favourite authors. It’s been a pleasure exploring your website.
Hi Melita,
What a lovely message! Thank you so much for visiting my website and for letting me know your thoughts. I’d be delighted if you wrote again after reading one or both books and shared your response.
Hi Virginia,
I finished the Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement and found it an extremely satisfying and rewarding read. I am so glad you bought the Bill Henson photograph and I loved you description of it. I admire how have managed to express both the epic and the everyday experience of love, grief and loss. I very much liked that the book was unsentimental, tender and truthful. I’m sure John is very proud.
I look forward to your next book. Thank you.
I look forward to your next book
Melita recently posted..The raw and the refined
Hi Melita,
Thank you so much for writing and letting me know you enjoyed reading it. I am always astounded when people take the trouble to contact me after reading the book. Unsentimental, tender and truthful – what a compliment. Thank you.
Dear Virginia,
I just finished your book in one sitting. In fact I climbed up onto the roof to finish it and have some privacy to get through what I knew was coming.My beautiful Tom died at the end of November last year of renal cancer that metastisised into his bones starting in his pelvis and then moving greedily elsewhere. He was only 52. I having been reading in crazy spurts whatever I can find in the library in the bereavement and cancer sections. I feel like a dog with a bone sometimes but much as it can be upsetting, it helps. The personal accounts seem to be the most helpful because of that strange sense of a shared journey and destination. Thankyou for writing your story. I hope that the writing helped you to make some sense of what happened. To read of your travails with all that comes with the cruelty of bone cancer and to know somebody else felt the same level of distress as I did trying to deal with and witness hideous pain has resonated with me. I also remember too well learning how to negotiate the world pushing someone in a wheelchair who felt every small bump. The shock, despair and then fury at how so little infrastructure allows you to do this easily. At my own ignorance and previous thoughts of how “funky” a public place looked. Now I see outrageously thoughtless landscaping that can make what is already difficult so much more difficult. I felt like I was living in a strange parallel universe where so much was monumental and yet most people around me just went on having normal lives oblivious. But as I thought that, I knew that statistically there was probably some other poor sucker in as much turmoil and pain as us in the same same supermarket or wherever I was. I live a very different reality now. I am early on in the “after” journey. I think a feeling of bewilderment as to what just happened in the last 17 months is the prevailing feeling at the moment. I will make it but as you well know, its just not easy. Tom was a truly wonderful, very unique individual and just way too young. And our love, as powerful as any tectonic event in nature, just had no chance against the relentless invasion of the cancer cells. We couldn’t save him. I watched and heard his last breath. I’m transported to that moment when I least expect it. I read your account of what happened at the end for you sitting on the roof in the late afternoon sun in Goulburn tears pouring down my face as I felt for you as you experienced something so profound. Something I don’t think I was prepared for. Too little life experience and too little useful information from those who worked at the hospice in Kogarah. I sometimes think that in the future I should try to help get some better information out there for people dealing with the end. At the end you are so busy just taking care of their needs you have no time to chase the detailed information you need. You assume the doctors and nurses will tell you what you need to know. It doesn’t often happen. You have to ask lots of questions at a time when you struggle to think straight. Must go, things to do. Again, many thanks. Perina
Dear Perina,
My heart goes out to you for your recent loss. I think you are quite extraordinary for being able to read my book so early on in your own grieving. (And to get on to a roof to do so!) I was not able to read anything longer than a pamphlet for a very long time. It’s uncanny to read of how similar some of your Tom’s and my John’s pain was, and of your struggle trying to help him and stay sane at the same time.
I agree that as a carer at that end of life stage it’s almost impossible to think about the lack of resources or help, let alone try to find them. I wonder if going through community nursing and/or the palliative care network might be the best way to reach people like us at that profound time. Ultimately though it’s as you say – you’re never prepared for the end, even when you feel it approaching.
I wish you strength and health as you grieve for Tom. Something that helped me at my darkest moments was to remember that John did not want me to succumb to despair. He wanted me to live for us both, to live a rich and full life.
With warmest wishes,
Virginia
Hi there Virginia!
Long time, no speak… I am sitting in our caravan down the South Coast with my dear old friend Cath P, sharing book recommendations between us. Both The Mother’s Group and The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement came up and have been highly recommended by Cath. I am heading to the Book Shop tomorrow to buy one or both of them. I am so sorry to hear of the road your life took at the young age of 34. Hope you are doing ok. Life is very unfair sometimes.
Cath wants to let you know that she was recommended Fiona’s book, tracked down an advance copy and read it in less than 24 hours and LOVED it. Then she discovered that Fiona lived only a few streets away from her and that YOU were her agent! A small world heh? Cath even reviewed it for the Manly Daily a few weeks ago and gave it 5 stars….Well done lady…
Maybe one of these days our paths will cross again. Take lots of care.
Jen.
Hi Jenny – so great to hear from you, and fantastic to discover the small world coincidences that connect us so many years later. I love it. Especially the part about Cath’s 5-star review – which I heard about from an excited Fiona, of course! Now I can share that I know the reviewer. Hilarious. I do hope you enjoy the book(s), Fiona’s novel is doing fantastically well and has a long shelf life ahead of it. Enjoy your holiday, a week down the South Coast would do me wonders right about now. Stay well and I hope to see you again one of these days. –Virginia
Hi Virginia,
I’ve just started your book and love it so far, but I have to take it a bit at a time. I am so blessed to have not lost my husband but I have two close friends who have. Both were in their 30s with children under 5. The insights you give about your feelings, the music you listened to, the smell of the dying flowers in vases make me realise how it mush have been for them. I am really looking forward to slowly unravelling the rest of the book.
Rebecca xo
Hi Rebecca, thank you for reading my book and for letting me know. It is very difficult to watch a friend go through a loss of that kind, to come face to face with life’s often senseless cruelty. I hope the book remains meaningful for you as you read the rest of it. ~Virginia
Hi Virginia,
The excitement of having you reply!! I just finished your book, and I loved it. Although I struggled to get through the few pages where you describe John’s final day, I’ve managed to make myself presentable to pick me kids up from school. My biggest gasp moment though? I have 3 children…Ruby, Alice and Finn. To find that you and I had chosen two of the same names really floored me for no apparent reason. You just can’t buy taste like that! Thanks for sharing such a fantastic journey.
Rebecca xo
Ah, Rebecca, thank YOU for reading and responding so honestly. That is quite a coincidence with the names Alice and Finn, I’m so glad you told me! With my warmest wishes, Virginia
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