Second Lives

A deeply resonant novel delving into the complexities of grief, healing, and identity, following a foundering poet who returns from a writers retreat to find her husband and son dead.

Lenore, a critically-acclaimed poet whose latest collection tanked after a bad review, has spent much of the last year cooped up inside her house. After a tragic gas leak accident, which led to the death of her husband and son while she was away at a literary festival, she has chosen to live the remainder of her miserable life in self-imposed exile. Her only interactions with the outside world are with her overbearing sister whom she sends proof of life updates everyday via the completed daily Wordle challenge, the young woman who carelessly delivers her groceries to her doorstep, and the couple whose sex & travel vlog she watches on LustforLife.com.

To kickstart Lenore’s recovery, her sister signs her up for a litany of therapists and psychoanalysts, all who suggest that she stop being a baby and just get over it. Lenore rebuffs them all, until she meets a delightfully unprofessional counselor who isn’t too pushy. She recommends, when Lenore is ready, that she try to write a letter everyday, in an effort to reclaim one of the only things she’s ever enjoyed in life. It’s through these letters that we learn Lenore’s life was falling to pieces long before the accident, and that it will take a Herculean effort for her to get back to relatively normal.

Second Lives is a remarkably tender novel that considers our unrelenting struggles with grief with patience and care. Hosein recognizes that the world is filled with suffering. Much of which is out of our control. Cruel, arbitrary things happen every day. But human capacity always allows for connection, creation, community, and the eventual return to the things we once loved.