The Rules of Inheritance: BlogHer Book Club Review

OK, I'm already digging this BlogHer Book Club gig.  I've read two new books in 3 weeks.

The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith is a memoir of an only child who lost both of her parents to cancer before she was 25.  Cheery, right?  Not a book I would have chosen on my own, but I am really glad I read it.

I was wary when I started, because we too, are older parents to an only daughter and I do worry about leaving her "alone in the world" when we're gone.  I also don't do well with sad books - they tend to stick with me and I internalize more than I should.

This book is really well-written and despite the weighty subject matter, very easy to read.  I breezed through it in three days because I really did want to know what happened to her.   My big DUH moment was realizing halfway through that it was a *memoir*, not fiction.  Somehow I missed that detail, and reading the first half had me thinking that no one's life was this depressing, and that the main character just could not catch a break, and wow this book is *such* a downer.

My perspective completely changed when I realized it was a memoir.  Halfway through, the author gives you glimpses into her later (and better) life.  She finds the love of her life, gets married, has a kid.  I appreciated her slow and arduous climb out of grief.  Smith is a talented writer who pulled me right along with her during her journey.

I didn't love the way the book was organized - it was divided into parts according to the stages of grief, and then within each section was a series of "scenes" from different times in Claire's life, jumping back and forth through time.  I'm a linear thinker, so I found the timeline-jumping very distracting.  I thought the same thing about The Time Traveler's Wife, too.  I realize that this organization was very deliberate as the stages of grief are not linear either.

The Kindle version had some weird formatting issues - but I may have received a special review copy, so those may be fixed in the "real" version.


I'd recommend this book for anyone looking to expand their horizons.  It's definitely not a shiny happy "vacation book" but it is enlightening, and possibly would help folks be a better friend to someone who's grieving.

I was compensated for this review by BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are totally my own.