Here's what I wrote in 2010 about this read: "Easy read. Tragedy repeatedly hit adolescent's family, but they endure." ( )

"It can't happen again, can it?" Ruby says to her mother when the second family member is afflicted with the same kind of brain tumor that killed the first (after yet another family member experiences a mental breakdown). I was hoping the same thing, but on a story level. At some point, the author would run out of tragedies to lob at her protagonist.

Or not.

Am I saying no one in reality has experienced this much darkness? Of course not. But the fact that "it happened to somebody once" doesn't make "it" credible in fiction. What we accept as truth in the news, we don't necessarily accept as plausible in a novel. In the case of this one, I can't suspend my incredulity, especially not long enough to care about this character's really-really-awful life.

Interestingly, Ruby (or perhaps Ms. Hermann?) seems to sense my skepticism. On p. 201, the following exchange takes place:

Secondary Character: "I really just can't believe your life sometimes."
Ruby: "I know. I can't believe it either."
SC: "And the way you speak about it ... You sound like you're in a play or something."
R: "Well of course I do! It's f***-ing ridiculous! Of course it would sound like a play--it certainly doesn't sound real."

Granted, dissociative behavior is a common defense mechanism, but to my knowledge, someone utilizing it is more likely to say, "Dissociating? What are you talking about?" The above conversation comes across more as a defense mechanism for Ms. Hermann, as if causing her characters to acknowledge the implausibility of events will suddenly make them more plausible.

So, could this book have pulled me in with one fewer tragedy? No, because I never get to know Ruby beyond the broad strokes: she's sensitive, observant, and thinks deeply and poetically. Grief has shut her down for a good portion of her life, but she is now on the other side of that. There's not much else to her character, certainly nothing to make her vivid or memorable. And here, again, lies the chasm between fact and fiction: if we hear about this story on the news, we sympathize with the person we know is out there somewhere living this story. If we read about it in a novel, we first have to be convinced that the character living the story is a person. Ruby never convinced me.

In addition, some reviews have praised Ms. Hermann's reliance on flashbacks. I found it frustrating. Far too many scenes are told in retrospect, rather than being shown in "real time." For example, on p. 68, Ruby sits on an apartment windowsill and muses the following:

"They hadn't fought over anything important--it started with the guidebook ... [Ruby's father] said he was tired of that guidebook, he was tired of [Ruby's mother] being so married to that g**-***n guidebook ... Which was a fair point, Ruby thought ... but her father was mean about it, and he snapped, and her mother was hurt and defensive ..."

Why on earth didn't Ms. Hermann just write the scene as a scene, show us the dialogue as dialogue, show us the characters' body language as they quarreled in the public square? Other places in the book, she drops a "shocker" line to keep us reading ("Three weeks later, [Character #1] was diagnosed with the brain tumor," "They knew about [Character #2]'s tumor for only three weeks before he hemorrhaged and entered the coma"), only to bounce to another point in time and leave us disoriented. I'm amenable to non-linear plotting when it serves a purpose, but this simply doesn't.

Between the unbelievable abundance of tragedy, the protagonist's lack of personality, and the author's insistence on scene-deadening flashback, I felt not one twinge for all that Ruby endures. ( )

Well, as I feared, there is no cure for grief. Beautiful book and one I needed to read though I cried many times during the process. ( )

"The Cure for Grief" explores the theme of loss and the way individuals deal with personal tragedies. The novel is told from the perspective of Ruby, the youngest of four children and the only girl in the Bronstein family. As a series of deaths and illnesses befall the family, Ruby deals with her grief by pushing it back and attempting to lead a normal life. She puts on a facade of 'everything is OK' and rarely confides in anyone, all the while the grief is eating her up on the inside. The culmination of the novel occurs when the pent up feelings become too much for Ruby, she explodes and then finds control over her emotions, and learns to live with and move on from the loss she has experienced as a child.

Hermann writes beautifully, her descriptions are creative and well thought-out. While reading the book I thought that such intensity of feelings would be hard to describe unless one experienced them; it was interesting to read in Hermann's blog that the novel was inspired by her own "terrors of adolescence".

While I enjoyed the book and do think that Hermann is a talented writer, I failed to connect with the characters as I normally do when I read fictional work. I could not imagine Ruby as a person - what she would look like, act like, etc. So much effort was dedicated to describing her inner thoughts that there was no sense of Ruby outside of her head, and the novel dragged on towards a predictable end. ( )

The Cure for Grief by Nellie Hermann is a beautifully told story of a young girl’s tragic family. We meet Ruby when she is 9 and her family is vacationing in Maine. Ruby is the youngest of four children. Her three brothers are considerably older than she and all close in age to each other. The reader learns they are a close-knit family, sharing time together and enjoying each other’s company. Ruby’s father is a holocaust survivor who has suffered the loss of both parents during that time. A year later, Ruby’s oldest brother Abe is diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and life in their family is changed forever. There are more tragedies in store for the Bronstein family as the years pass.

This is an eloquently told story with exquisite writing, rather remarkable for a first novel. My only criticism is that Ruby’s depression over her family’s tragedies is so overwhelming; I had to wonder how she functioned on a day-to-day basis. Ruby is selective in who she tells about her family and their tragedies, sharing the story of her brother Nathan’s terminal illness with only one friend while keeping it from the young man she talks to on the phone every night.

I found the description of Ruby’s depression quite well drawn. It is a well told story of living through the reality of the struggles life hands you. The story gives insight into the dark abyss that is depression ( )