Planet Claire: Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers
The second installment in Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint challenges the traditional solemnity that characterizes nonfiction books of grief, loss, and sorrow.

“Few readers will fail to be gripped by this tragically common story about death and what comes after for those left behind . . . A haunting and thought-provoking consideration of death and ‘how utterly it rips apart our lives.'” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

Planet Claire is the story of the untimely death of the author’s wife and his candid account of the following year of madness and grief. As his life unravels, Porter analyzes his sadness with growing interest. He talks to Claire as if to evoke a presence, to mark a space for memory. He reports on his daily walks and shares observations of life’s sadness, while reminiscing about various moments in their life together. Like Orpheus, the author searches for a lost love, and what he finds is not the dog of doom but flashes of an intimate symmetry that brighten the darkest places of sorrow.

The second title from Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint, Planet Claire takes readers on a journey of sorrow that recalls memorable works by C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed), Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking), and Julian Barnes (Levels of Life). Porter’s memoir, however, is also playful, quirky, and self-ironic in a way that challenges the genre’s traditional solemnity. Like the novel Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, this is an unpredictably funny account of heartbreak, as if to say there’s something about the magnitude of loss that troubles even earnestness.

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Planet Claire: Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers
The second installment in Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint challenges the traditional solemnity that characterizes nonfiction books of grief, loss, and sorrow.

“Few readers will fail to be gripped by this tragically common story about death and what comes after for those left behind . . . A haunting and thought-provoking consideration of death and ‘how utterly it rips apart our lives.'” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

Planet Claire is the story of the untimely death of the author’s wife and his candid account of the following year of madness and grief. As his life unravels, Porter analyzes his sadness with growing interest. He talks to Claire as if to evoke a presence, to mark a space for memory. He reports on his daily walks and shares observations of life’s sadness, while reminiscing about various moments in their life together. Like Orpheus, the author searches for a lost love, and what he finds is not the dog of doom but flashes of an intimate symmetry that brighten the darkest places of sorrow.

The second title from Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint, Planet Claire takes readers on a journey of sorrow that recalls memorable works by C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed), Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking), and Julian Barnes (Levels of Life). Porter’s memoir, however, is also playful, quirky, and self-ironic in a way that challenges the genre’s traditional solemnity. Like the novel Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, this is an unpredictably funny account of heartbreak, as if to say there’s something about the magnitude of loss that troubles even earnestness.

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Planet Claire: Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers

Planet Claire: Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers

by Jeff Porter
Planet Claire: Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers

Planet Claire: Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers

by Jeff Porter

Hardcover

$37.95 
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Overview

The second installment in Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint challenges the traditional solemnity that characterizes nonfiction books of grief, loss, and sorrow.

“Few readers will fail to be gripped by this tragically common story about death and what comes after for those left behind . . . A haunting and thought-provoking consideration of death and ‘how utterly it rips apart our lives.'” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

Planet Claire is the story of the untimely death of the author’s wife and his candid account of the following year of madness and grief. As his life unravels, Porter analyzes his sadness with growing interest. He talks to Claire as if to evoke a presence, to mark a space for memory. He reports on his daily walks and shares observations of life’s sadness, while reminiscing about various moments in their life together. Like Orpheus, the author searches for a lost love, and what he finds is not the dog of doom but flashes of an intimate symmetry that brighten the darkest places of sorrow.

The second title from Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint, Planet Claire takes readers on a journey of sorrow that recalls memorable works by C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed), Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking), and Julian Barnes (Levels of Life). Porter’s memoir, however, is also playful, quirky, and self-ironic in a way that challenges the genre’s traditional solemnity. Like the novel Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, this is an unpredictably funny account of heartbreak, as if to say there’s something about the magnitude of loss that troubles even earnestness.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781617759079
Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date: 01/05/2021
Pages: 232
Product dimensions: 5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

JEFF PORTER is the author of Lost Sound: The Forgotten Art of Radio Storytelling, the memoir Oppenheimer Is Watching Me, and coeditor of Understanding the Essay. His essays and articles have appeared in several magazines and literary reviews, including the Antioch Review, Northwest Review, Shenandoah, Missouri Review, Hotel Amerika, Wilson Quarterly, Contemporary Literature, and the Seneca Review. For the better part of his career, he taught English at the University of Iowa. He loves cameras, dogs, and guitars—though not in that order. He splits his time between Milwaukee and Tucson. His latest work is Planet Claire: Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers. For more information visit, www.jeff-porter.com.

Table of Contents

Prologue 11

Chapter 1 Pluto (The Separator) 19

Chapter 2 Charon (The Borderman) 49

Chapter 3 Saturn (The Cogitator) 60

Chapter 4 Titan (The Elder) 84

Chapter 5 Mars (The Contrarian) 92

Chapter 6 Phobos (Bringer of Terror) 114

Chapter 7 Jupiter (The Combiner) 122

Chapter 8 Europa (Master of Subzero) 141

Chapter 9 Venus (The Joker) 154

Chapter 10 The Moon (Strange Attractor) 177

Chapter 11 Mercury (The Envoy) 192

Chapter 12 The Sun (The Spectator) 214

Chapter 13 Neptune (The Randomizer) 224

Chapter 14 Centaurus (The Traveler) 245

Afterword 270

Acknowledgments 272

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