Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide
“Half in love with easeful death” is how poet John Keats described his dreamy sense that death would be a welcome release. Linda Gray Sexton, daughter of Anne Sexton, should have been immunized against suicide by the pain of losing her mother, who took her own life at the height of her fame as one of the prime movers in the confessional poetry movement. But in midlife, as her own writing career seemed stalled and her marriage more distant than satisfying, Sexton found herself hounded by the same demons that had destroyed her mother. She writes of three suicide attempts in grim and detailed prose, but at the end she describes a newly settled and happier life with the demons held at bay. The rather rushed ending feels less settled than Sexton probably intended, but overall this is a welcome personal look at the specter that haunts many families, in which a parent’s suicide can threaten the mental health of descendants. --Patricia Monaghan