This is a deeply personal memoir that begins with the author's loss of her husband. She talks of what that experience was like and the impact it had on her mental well-being. In a sudden decision, she decided to take a transfer to India for a short duration.
She ended up in Mumbai around 2008, and this is the period that she describes. She learns to adjust to a new and alien environment (although the place and time she describes feel alien to me as an Indian now, these many years later), step out of her comfort zone and learn to deal with her grief.
The timing of her stay in the city coincided with a terrorist attack that also targeted Jewish people, and her faith is something that is part of the author's fabric. She learns to reconnect to it at a deeper level through the traumatic experiences she witnesses. I was unaware of some of the details of what happened, and after reading about it, I know why I probably did not know as much.
This book can be both triggering and helpful for people who have undergone similar life events.
I found the strength the author manages to gather commendable and found it a very interesting read.
I would recommend this book to others who like reading memoirs with personal introspections.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

Having lost my Dad just over 18 months ago, I thought this might show different ideas on how to deal with grief. But it’s more of a memoir and travel diary (sometimes overly descriptive), without much into grief itself or how to navigate it. There’s quite a long section at the beginning about losing her husband (in quite graphic detail at times).

I received a free ARC copy of this via NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

Beautiful and emotional. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

This is a raw, emotive but colourful read with hope at its core.

Susan Bloch is with her husband as he dies. This book takes us on her journey through the overwhelmingly dark days but also the glimmers of sunlight she experiences in the years following. She demonstrates amazing strength and independence by accepting a job in Mumbai, India and learns to live without her husband in the frantic whirlwind of the city. Her slow growth into the flamboyant, loud and colourful city is fascinating and a great source of hope and optimism, as is her slow gathering of supportive new friends. Highly recommended.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Raw and compelling writing by a woman grieving the loss of her beloved husband. To try to recover, she goes to India to work and try to recover from her loss. Beautiful writing but tough to read.

A very powerful and gripping story that is difficult to read in some parts but worth sticking with. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Travels With My Grief by Susan Bloch

I chose Travels With My Grief because I have yet to encounter grief in this capacity. People read memoirs for so many varied reasons. Indeed, I imagine that each of us reads for a variety of reasons. I read memoirs to immerse in a perspective that is not my own, to understand -- if only briefly, incompletely, and inadequately -- what an experience of life might be. I am a humanist.

Memoirs, therefore, inherently take me to places of great discomfort, places of dark unfamiliarity. My objective is dissonance, the book and my reading of it, a form of liminal initiation by proxy.

Travels With My Grief threw me into an ice-cold alien landscape, one which was terrifying because of its banality: This is an ordinary grief, the loss of a spouse, a friend, a companion, a lover. The wall between my comfortable life and Bloch's grief-stricken one was a thin one, translucent enough for me to see myself in her stead. One day -- my odds are 3 to 1, based on my own fallible knowledge of male and female longevity -- I will be in that place, in her place. A widow.

And what then? The journey of grief Bloch takes the reader on is both ethereal, surreal, unreal and all to plausible simultaneously, because no one imagines the death of one so close to themselves and yet, we all must experience it in some fashion -- or at very least, contemplate the possibility.

For those same reasons, Travels With My Grief was comforting. Bloch survived, survives, so too will I, could I, must I.

But Travels With My Grief does not convey a simple message of "You Will Survive", it is more. It is surviving without forgetting, without discarding the grief. Grief becomes a passenger in the life thereafter, where, in the beginning, it might have once been the driving force. Another comforting message.

This memoir is also about the concept of grief, the power -- emancipating and debilitating -- of the idea of widowhood. There are cross-cultural clashes, competing notions of what it means to grieve, how to do it, what it can or should be in a person's life. This memoir is about how to live with those shifts in one's identity, not only internally from our own subjective experience, but also how those who grieve might be treated by others. What does it mean to be labelled, "widow"? How does one live with such an identifier when one hasn't been that before?

I am glad to have read this. But Travels With My Grief is a memoir that cannot make sense fully to me, not until I am in the throes of this kind of grief. I imagine that when that moment comes, passages from the book may return to my mind or I will be inclined to reread it.

A tough book to read if one is a widow (or widower?). Susan's husband dies after they have been married about 12 years (she has grown children from an earlier marriage/relationship).

Susan and John lived in the UK, traveled quite a bit but he had been exposed to asbestos and developed a lung disorder, which eventually killed him. Susan just had a very difficult time coping with his death; she was offered a job opportunity in India and accepted that. Most of the story deals with her time in India.

I enjoyed the book, particularly the portion in India; the first portion where she was attempting to deal with her grief was hard to read (I am a widow after a 29 yr marriage).

This book is simply delicious on every level. Susan Bloch's exploration of love and partnership, travels both sublime and sensuous, soul= crushing, and dark. The experience of reading "Travels with my Grief" feels like pouring over the travel journals and diaries of a close, much-envied friend. At midlife myself, I found her travels to be compelling and delightful. Highly recommended.! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

Very honored to have the opportunity to review this title. Full review to follow both here and on the blog. As someone who has experienced a fair share of grief over the past few years I’m always inspired by others who work their way through it and keep going. I cannot wait to read Susan’s story,

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Witty, yet wise with intimate insights, this is a unique journey of sensuous delights, a beautiful and compelling series of adventures that capture the insecurities, pain and ultimate joy of a middle-aged woman facing life and embracing life on her own.

When Susan Bloch lost her partner John far too early, she faced her grief with courage – and what many would term a moment of madness. Giving up her successful career in the UK, she moved overnight to India, facing not just the uncertainties and worries of a new life in a strange land – and being one of the only white women in a high-powered corporate role – but coping with her own very real grief at the death of her husband. Susan’s brave – and some might say unconventional – approach to tackling her grief provides a compelling and very human insight into loss of a loved one, and at the same time delivers a beautifully written love letter to India in all its vibrant, chaotic, life-affirming glory.

Refreshingly honest and highly emotive, Travels with My Grief is as engaging as it is inspiring, and is more than a simple self-help manual or travelogue. This book is a genuinely life-changing read, and one that should be read by anyone who wants an insight into the joys, belief, spirituality and hope that living can bring us all.