Abigail Thomas packs A Three Dog Life with brutal observations, made palatable by moments of pure comic relief. She tells the story of her life before and after her husband, Rich, suffers from traumatic brain injury after being hit by a car.
I read this memoir after reading a short article a good friend left on my doorstep called “Everyone Has A Story To Tell” by the same author. She tells how her husband Rich describes his life after the accident:
“In a moment of perfect clarity, he once described his loss like this: ‘Pretend you are walking up the street with your friend. You are looking in windows. But right behind you is a man with a huge paint roller filled with white paint and he is painting over everywhere you’ve been, erasing everything. He erases your friend. You don’t even remember his name.”
The best part of this short article is the writing exercises Abigail Thomas recommends. Here’s an example: “Take any ten years of your life and reduce them to two pages. Every sentence has to be three words long — not two, not four, but three words long.