Danielle Ariano, "The Requirement of Grief"

Danielle Ariano spent her childhood in Drexel Hill, trying to mimic her older sister Alexis: the way she dresses, speaks, even the way she stands when she smokes. But at 12, Ariano gets the first clue that all might not be well in Alexis’s inner world, when her sister locks herself in a bathroom and swallows a handful of aspirin. This is the first of 13 suicide attempts that will span 30 years. The Requirement of Grief lays bare the relationship between two sisters and the bond that remains in the wake of a suicide. In startlingly honest prose, Ariano tracks her grief journey chronologically through days, months, and years; all the way through the birth of her first son. But will the unparalleled new joy of motherhood be powerful enough to drive out her grief?