What Comes Next and How to Like It: A Memoir Paperback – April 19, 2016

This newest memoir is like SAFEKEEPING in format and style. However, deeply etched with personal feelings: love, trust, betrayal, anger and last (most important) forgiveness. We have all been there in some form. And the hurt from a family member is hardest to accept and then recover from in order to get to discussion in all forms of "what happened." Often with humor, one of Abby's greatest gifts.Abigail Thomas has the ability to cross boundaries without alienation. She uses her background as editor, agent, and finally writer and teacher to spin this analysis and reflection of life in general. Not preachy, but challenging thoughts about our mortality, our weaknesses, the limited time we have, and what's most important along the way as we all take the journey.If you are not ready to do the work, as in fill in the blanks of all the 'white space,' this won't be for you. But if you have loved her other work, and have been up to the challenge of thinking after these snippets of incredibly tight writing, you will also love this. And thus, what I mean by you, as the reader, need to fill in all the white space with your own consideration.Years in the making. Years in the thinking. Years of crying, crumpling up pages, and then thinking some more of "how to find the way into the story" (a favorite expression of the author) and it was worth the wait. I highly recommend this especially to those of us over sixty.

If you like Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron, you'll love Abigail Thomas.This is sad, true, hilarious, poignant. I wish my mom would tell me what she is thinking on some of this level, but I'm glad my mom doesn't smoke or drink like she does, so there's the trade, I guess. I do love the most her relationship with her kids. There are hard-won loving moments and things that just feel very real and I appreciate her revealing what is going on below - it helps with this humanity thing.

I love reading memoirs when they're good and this one's very good. Written by an older woman my age who's successful in the literary field and what she and other women her age go through, from romance, loneliness, tiredness, etc. told with a sophisticated, quirky sense of humor. The details she shares regarding conversations with her daughter, friend, and male best friend and their particularly literate, funny back and forths are very entertaining. I'm sure what she writes about regarding her dogs being such good company will resonate with many people too, although I don't share that enthusiasm, it's interesting. Her book gets more and more honest as it goes along, finally divulging just how strongly she was and still is addicted to alcohol and the funny excuses she makes for drinking. Sorry; they ARE funny excuses. Her best friend of many years is male, platonic, and her shares of his metaphorical strings of thought are interesting as well as what's happened through the years to them both. She makes you feel for her without ever being sappy about things and she's gone through a lot including having a daughter diagnosed with cancer. She's able to intertwine events in ways that are amazing.

When I read a memoir, I hope to be at least one of the following: inspired, motivated, entertained, enlightened, educated, or moved. There might be other qualities, but you get the idea. There has to be a takeaway.In What Comes Next, written by a woman in her 70s, I didn't get much of anything, aside from a few entertaining chapters (all very short), and a few pithy phrases. Her life theme, in retrospect, seemed to be, "You can't control anything so don't try. Just live however you want, with as little effort as possible." So the main value of this book for me was to see/feel one old person's experience. Like a series of snapshots of a life. It wasn't even moving enough to be depressing.The book consists of stream-of-consciousness vignettes. The author's viewpoint can be summed up in this advice she is tempted to give people in their 20s: "Forget career, forget the future, forget existential worries, just get yourselves a couple of dogs, and everything will be all right."According to other reviewers, her earlier books are much better, so I wonder if this is representative of her general decline. If so, I hope she gets help. In essence, What Comes Next is a sad depiction of one person's experience of aging.

Fabulous! Period! I'm just thrilled that I discovered this author and plan to get all of her books from Amazon. Love her "paragraph as chapter" style and find it so much easier to read than books with chapters that go on for pages and pages and pages. Abigail Thomas is a woman I'd love to sit and have coffee with and in this book has written something that resonates so intensely with me that I pace myself hoping the story/entertainment will never end. Here's a woman who's willing to sleep underneath "rags" (just like me!) because her dog Daphne destroys everything anyway and there'd be no point in using anything beautiful (I have cats who like to throw up), though that's but one tiny example of the things we have in common and must laugh about at the end of the day. Abigail Thomas is very dry and very funny and very quirky...exactly my cup of tea.

I love how she honestly writes about life and death. A lot of us don't think about these things and when they are upon our head, we can't handle them.

What makes the perfect memoir, or at least a fine memoir, is something I think long and hard about. This is because I ghostwrite other people's memoirs for a living. I love the genre and read it almost exclusively. I consider Abigail Thomas' memoir Three Dog Life to be the perfect example of a memoir so I was very excited to hear she had written this. It touches on the part of her life covered in TDL, but expands on it. I read it in an afternoon. She is wonderful. From observing snails to considering death, this book is a gift. It made me cry, think, ponder, remember and laugh out loud. Abigail Thomas has a handle on life, in all its fragility, but is not afraid to show us when that handle is wobbly, or to stretch a metaphor, when she loses her grip. Her view of the world is uplifting, even when things are bleak. She makes me feel that I can survive whatever is thrown at me. Her writing is simple and clear yet poetic. I know this book and its message or messages, will stay with me forever. It shifted me on my axis in just a few hours. When it comes to memoir, Abigail Thomas is the queen. It is a privilege to be invited into her life and her thoughts, and I will always be grateful to her for perfecting her craft and sharing her life.

A very realistic biography relating the agony and ecstasy of motherhood by an aging writer to her lifelong best friend. Also I could not help but think that her pets were the luckiest animals on the planet, the author has much love to share.

Draws you into her world - slowly but surely.

Different style of writing. Totally loved it.