GHOST STORIES

Scenes from a marriage.

After her husband, Paul Auster, died on April 30, 2024, award-winning poet, novelist, essayist, and scholar Hustvedt felt mired in loss and grief. Books about bereavement, therapy, and the consolations of family and friends hardly assuaged a state of mind she calls “cognitive splintering,” where “the logic of time and space” seemed scrambled. As she navigates widowhood, reflecting on a 43-year marriage to a man she adored, she realizes that she “can’t crawl into the box labeled PAUL and live there.” Her memoir, then, is her attempt to “hunt for my lost partner by writing about him,” and to pay homage to their life together. Emails to their friends and journal entries chronicle his life after being diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer in January 2023. The diagnosis came after a terrifying year: In 2021, his 10-month-old granddaughter was found dead; his son was arrested for negligent homicide; and in 2022, the son overdosed while released on bail. Buffeted now by a devastating illness, Auster faced harsh treatments and debilitating side effects. Although surgery had been his “best hope,” that hope was dashed in May 2023 because immunotherapy had severely damaged his lungs. Besides recounting his final illness, Hustvedt creates a palpable portrait of Auster as lover and husband, father and grandfather, through his own writings, including seven letters to his infant grandson Miles, to be read by “the future young man.” The warm letters share family history, especially of Miles’ mother—Auster’s and Siri’s daughter, Sophie—and the man she married. Auster could be stubborn and tactless, Hustvedt admits, but also kind and sentimental. Their bond was physical, emotional, and deeply intellectual. He told Hustvedt he wanted to return as a ghost; she honors that desire in this intimate memoir.

A widow’s candid love story.