In Michelle Zauner’s 2021 memoir and Russell Banks’s 1991 novel, unfathomable loss catapults people into unknown realms of pain and lonesomeness—but with time, trauma also leads them back to selves they had always contained but almost forgotten.
Recent works by Sarah Perry, Michelle Zauner, and Sara Nović demonstrate how, with time, they were able to take their pain and paralysis and forge something beautiful.