Swooning Beauty: A Memoir of Pleasure. Joanna Frueh. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2006; xiii + 289 pages; ISBN 087417-672-7; $29.50US (paper).
In Freud's poetic "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917), he tells us that m ourning is a painful labour in which the mourner retreats deep within her interior to process the loss of a person or ideal by sifting through her memories. W e do this work to prepare for new connections with the world and for loving once again. Swooning Beauty is a luscious delicacy that documents art historian Joanna Frueh's passage into her grief following the deaths of her parents and the dissolution of her marriage over a two year period. This book chronicles the epic journey of a hero who is supporting herself through these great losses by clutching pleasure close to her heart and then letting go, opening herself to blissful new possibilities. It is a testam ent to the hard and exhausting work of mourning that honours the deep and difficult knowledge that can com e into being only through bereavement.
The essays in this mem oir are enrobed in chocolate, an actual and figurative object that trum pets the virtues of beauty and eroticism in the flesh that are experienced through eating, sex, gardening, spending tim e with anim als, exercising, friendship, learning and art. Chocolate is a physically, emotionally and intellectually nourishing and comforting substance that is an anchor to the hope and fear that new joys and happenings can emerge from beyond the dusky devastation of grief. W ith a memory that is finely tuned to the opulence of sensory experience, Frueh explores the history of her fam ily, girlhood,

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sexuality and fem ininity in both their everyday and extraordinary manifestations. To live through the loss of her parents and marriage and maintain faith in pleasure's return, Frueh describes the discovery of her heroic m anhood which makes it possible for her to embody the qualities of strength and bravery that are com m only attributed to men in western cultures. The mem oir's hero creates Mel (a character who bears a resemblance to Gibson's fictional and visual persona and also embodies the lovely and valiant aspects of masculinity) after the death of her mother as a way of fashioning another hero with whom she can identify and love as she heals and transform s.
At the conclusion of the book, Frueh makes the incisive observation that feminists frequently expound upon the traum a and difficulty of - and longing for em bodim ent at the expense of lavishing time, talk and written words on the pleasures of the body. This autobiography refreshingly resists this tendency and celebrates embodied pleasure as a means of living with and accepting loss as a vital part of living, rather than trying to overcom e it. In many ways, this reflection on the juicy enjoym ent of fleshiness guides the hero of this book through her voyage. At the same time, this reflection encourages the reader to think about her own relationship to the pleasures of beauty and love and the intim ate affiliation that these pleasures have with loss and letting go. For those of us who have experienced heartbreaking loss as well as deep, beautiful delight, this memoir is a treat to savour slowly or quickly, according to your pleasure.
Rachel Hurst York University