{"id":1620575,"date":"2025-08-02T21:23:32","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T01:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/?p=1620575"},"modified":"2025-08-02T21:23:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T01:23:32","slug":"divine-reads-the-bright-hour-by-nina-riggs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/divine-reads-the-bright-hour-by-nina-riggs\/","title":{"rendered":"DIVINE Reads: The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bright Hour – A Memoir of Living and Dying<\/em> by Nina Riggs: About the Book*<\/h2>\n

An exquisite memoir about how to live\u2014and love\u2014every day with \u201cdeath in the room,\u201d from poet Nina Riggs, mother of two young sons and the direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the tradition of When Breath Becomes Air<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are breathless, but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer\u2014one small spot. Within a year, the mother of two sons, ages seven and nine, and married sixteen years to her best friend, received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal.<\/p>\n

How does one live each day, \u201cunattached to outcome\u201d? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty?<\/p>\n

Exploring motherhood, marriage, friendship, and memory, even as she wrestles with the legacy of her great-great-great grandfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nina Riggs\u2019s breathtaking memoir continues the urgent conversation that Paul Kalanithi began in his gorgeous When Breath Becomes Air<\/em><\/a>. She asks, what makes a meaningful life when one has limited time?<\/p>\n

Brilliantly written, disarmingly funny, and deeply moving, The Bright Hour<\/em> is about how to love all the days, even the bad ones, and it\u2019s about the way literature, especially Emerson, and Nina\u2019s other muse, Montaigne, can be a balm and a form of prayer. It\u2019s a book about looking death squarely in the face and saying \u201cthis is what will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Especially poignant in these uncertain times, The Bright Hour<\/em><\/a> urges us to live well and not lose sight of what makes us human: love, art, music, words.<\/p>\n

The Review<\/a><\/h2>\n
\"The
Photo: Jill Schneiderman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Bright Hour – A Memoir of Living and Dying<\/em> by Nina Riggs is often compared to Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air.\u00a0<\/em>I have read both books, and although they both deal with death, although both deal with death under similar circumstances\u2014young, in their prime, struck down by cancer\u2014this is where the comparison ends. Both are beautifully written but stand on their own merits and tell the story of their final days in a way that is tragically beautiful. An interesting note: Nina Rigg’s widower, John Duberstein and Paul Kalanithi’s widow, Lucy, found love with each other after their shared grief.<\/p>\n

Nina Riggs’ writing is poetic, fitting for a descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She casts a spell with her writing, making the book difficult to put down\u2014until the end. As the reader knows, she doesn\u2019t make it, and that impending finality makes the conclusion something to dread. Anyone who has experienced will find something to relate to in this book. Riggs lost her own mother to cancer as she fought her own battle. She faces a double grief\u2014her mother\u2019s death and her own impending loss\u2014with brutal realism.<\/p>\n

A book about dying can lapse into being maudlin, but Riggs never allows that to happen. It feels more like a love story for her family, giving her two young sons a sense of who their mother was. She continues to live during her health struggles. She travels, she writes and in an especially moving portion, she selects and then changes her mind about a couch that she can convalesce on and her family can enjoy after her death.<\/p>\n