The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp

(Penguin, $26)

The subject of Emily Rapp’s memoir may sound too excruciating to engage with, said Buzzy Jackson in The Boston Globe. Two years ago in January, the writer learned that her 9-month-old son, Ronan, had Tay-Sachs disease—a rare genetic disorder that is always fatal and kills the average victim at age 3. This chilling diagnosis is shared with the reader in the book’s second sentence—“but you should keep reading.” Rapp has created “a beautiful and passionate elegy for her son, a book that offers deep wisdom” precisely because it’s no “trite tale of triumph over adversity.” In fact, it doesn’t even offer answers.

The Still Point of the Turning World is never depressing, “because depression is a state of stasis,” said Malena Watrous in the San Francisco Chronicle. Rapp has a “rigorous” mind, and as her time with Ronan passes, she “actively investigates her grief, making something meaningful out of it” as we watch over her shoulder. Very quickly she’s forced to abandon her old ideas about how to create a meaningful life, said Sarah Manguso in The New York Times. Instead of preparing a child for future success, as many fellow parents are doing, she and her husband are making decisions about when Ronan’s regression will force them to put away his more advanced toys, and how to prepare him for the pain he’ll soon be experiencing. Rejecting the mind-set of tough-love parenting manuals, Rapp becomes ferociously committed to the simple role of providing Ronan with as much love and care as possible. “Ronan taught me,” she writes, “that children do not exist to honor their parents; their parents exist to honor them.”

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The lessons the author learns obviously do not apply to her alone, said Heller McAlpin in the Los Angeles Times. “Her determination to envelop her son in love, protect him from as much suffering as possible, and then let him go is a protocol as applicable to an Alzheimer’s patient as to a sick child.” Ronan died this February, after this book was finished, but grief visits everyone eventually. We have no answer for it but love.