# The Long Goodbye

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/meghan-orourke/the-long-goodbye/9780748130610

![The Long Goodbye](https://quivercdn.com/covers/virago/meghan-orourke/the-long-goodbye_978-07-4813-061-0.jpg?v=2026-08-06%2006%3A19%3A37)

- Book: [The Long Goodbye](https://www.bookquiver.com/meghan-orourke/the-long-goodbye) ([The Long Goodbye.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/meghan-orourke/the-long-goodbye.md))
- Authors: [Meghan O’Rourke](https://www.bookquiver.com/meghan-orourke)
- Publisher: virago
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-07-4813-061-0
- Published: 2011-08-25
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: E-book

## Description

Meghan O'Rourke was thirty-two when her mother died of cancer on Christmas Day, 2008. As a writer, even in the depths of her grief, she was fascinated by what she observed of herself in the aftermath: the rage she felt, not only at what had happened to her mother, but also at the inability of people to acknowledge her pain; her sense that the meaning of her life had changed fundamentally with the loss of a parent; the way that the reassuringly familiar often became somehow completely new and strange. The Long Goodbye interleaves personal recollections of her much-loved mother with an examination of what it means to grieve in a society which no longer has the rituals - or even, most of the time, the desire - to engage with grief, to understand it, and to let it do both its worst - and its best.