Culture | BooksA Widow's Story - reviewWilliam Leith10 April 2012A Widow's Storyby Joyce Carol Oates (4th Estate, £8.99)Yet another book by Joyce Carol Oates, you might think. But this is one of her very best. It's a memoir in which she tells of the death of her husband.She captures the pain and confusion with an exceptional grace. One day, she wakes up to find her husband, Ray, a literary editor, already eating breakfast. He doesn't feel quite himself.He goes to the hospital; it turns out he has a chest infection. At this point, if you didn't know what was going to happen next, everything would seem to be normal. But it's not.Suddenly he's not there, and it's this fact, and its strangeness, that Oates grapples with, brilliantly.
