I bought a memoir by Joyce Carol Oates not long ago. Why? Well ... I knew her name. She has a considerable reputation as a novelist. I had never read any of her novels, and thought this might be a way to sample her abilities. It was a mistake. As noted in the first sentence above, the book I bought, A Widow's Story is not a novel. It is a memoir. And it is a thoroughly depressing memoir about her husband's death and the early months of life alone after a happy marriage of decades. This passage, from early on in the book, represents about as far as I managed to get before giving up. -------------------------------- Your husband's heartbeat has accelerated -- we haven't been able to stabilize it -- in the event that his heart stops do you want extraordinary measures to be used to keep him alive? I am so stunned that I can't reply, the stranger at the other end of the line repeats his astonishing words -- I hear myself stammering Yes! Yes of course --...