Inventions in a Grieving House

A novella by Patricia Grossman

When her mother dies in an accident, Mona Garvin is left alone with her father, an asphalt supplier with little impulse to imagine the experience of a young girl or attend to her impressions. Still, Mona’s impressions survive and deepen—revealed with vividness and quiet intensity from within this grieving house.

“I haven’t read such a poignant account of childhood and early adolescence since the days of J.D. Salinger and Carson McCullers. Ms. Grossman has written a beautiful tale.”

—James McConkey

“In lesser hands, the ‘grieving’ of this narrative were mere sentimentality. Grossman’s ‘inventions’ more than save it … If most of us tend to bury our keenest responses in platitude, Grossman digs them back up in all their luminous specificity.”

—Sydney Lea