The Song of the Whole Wide World

An extraordinary memoir of anticipatory grief, seventy-two minutes of life and a silent maternity leave, from artist and academic Tamarin Norwood.

A few months into pregnancy, Tamarin Norwood learned that the baby she was carrying would not live. Over the sleepless weeks that followed, Tamarin, her husband and their three-year-old son tried to navigate the unfamiliar waters of anticipatory sorrow and to prepare for what was to come.

Written partly during pregnancy and partly during the silent maternity leave that followed, The Song of the Whole Wide World is an emergency response to grief held somewhere between the womb, the grave and the many stories that bind them: stories drawn from medical science, poetry, liturgy, vivid waking dreams of underwater life, and knowledge held deep within the body.

This profoundly moving and intimate account offers a lyrical and fearless meditation on birth, death, and the possibilities of consolation.