The Unspeakable and Other Subjects of Discussion by Meghan Daum Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014; 256pp In “Matricide” Meghan Daum describes, in black-glass prose, an extraordinary cycle of horror. It begins with the death of her grandmother, continues with the passing — within a year — of her mother, almost culminates in her own demise through freak infection, and ends with a miscarriage. But this is by no means a misery diary. Rather, as she will throughout this excellent collection, Daum eschews propriety in pursuit of honesty, integrity… and black humor. This quite brilliant essay is really about a species of matrilineal distaste that many readers will surely recognize, even if few would admit it. Daum writes of the day her mother began “to self-define as a theater person” and her reaction (“allergic… on every level”) to the phoniness that followed. She tells of her mother’s spiteful outbursts at her father on hearing she has gallbladder cancer (“‘He’s happy,’ she hissed.”) And from the first sentences, she sets about destroying the clichés that surround death literature: People who weren’t there like to say that my mother died at home surrounded by her loving family. This is technically true, though it […]