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The Bright Hour cover art

The Bright Hour

By: Nina Riggs
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Kirby Heyborne
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Summary

An intimate, unflinching account of 'living with death in the room'.

'We are breathless, but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other.'

Nina Riggs was just 37 years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer - one small spot. Within a year, the mother of two sons, ages seven and nine, and married 16 years to her best friend, received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal. How does one live each day 'unattached to outcome'? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty?

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

Brilliantly written, disarmingly funny and deeply moving, The Bright Hour is about how to love all the days, even the bad ones, and it's about the way literature, especially Emerson, and Nina's other muse, Montaigne, can be a balm and a form of prayer. It's an audiobook about looking death squarely in the face and saying 'this is what will be'. Especially poignant in these uncertain times, The Bright Hour urges us to live well and not lose sight of what makes us human: love, art, music, words.

©2017 Nina Riggs (P)2017 Simon & Schuster Audio

What listeners say about The Bright Hour

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Pretentious

To be honest (and it’s hard to write this) but if she just cut out the trying hard to prove how well read she is, it would be a much much better narrative. If she’s not quoting montagne then she’s banging on about her ancestor Emerson’. It gets unbearable and ruins a completely poignant and raw story. I can’t help but think the sole purpose of this is to prove she’s clever- but we already know this. Almost un-finishable.

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Moving story, beautifully narrated

This book is a little gem.
Despite the sadness it is truly uplifting and life affirming.

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Slow going

I work in the funeral industry and usually find books like this interesting but left five hours unlistened to - I just couldn’t get into it at all, it felt like it was trying to be too clever...

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Beautiful

What a beautiful, sad book. Unflinchingly honest and as beautifully written as you'd expect from a poet.

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