It is hard not to come away from Sarah Perry’s After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search without feeling a complex set of emotions and thoughts. The overwhelming feeling is of the gut punch of sorrow caused by the steep and terrible price of violence in human life – and in this case, in the lives of women.
Perry titles her chapters before and after (her mother’s murder) signifying how that event was singular, worthy of a different reckoning of time. This violent act is a marker of a new era.
Perry is an able writer, and she has organized this book so it rises above the genres it seems destined to fall into. Yes, her memoir is about crime, violence, revenge, justice, and toxic masculinity… all we come to expect from such a book. But the author transcends the expectations of the genre to create something far more complex, harrowing, and interesting.
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