History of a Suicide

History of a Suicide (2011) by Jill Bialosky. For 240 pages, Bialosky struggles in vain to extract some sort of meaning, some redemptive explanation, from her sister's suicide in 1990. Bialosky attacks the problem from every angle, from the personal to the psychological to the mythological to the poetical. Her own suffering is abundantly clear -- her sister's suicide has profoundly and forever changed Bialosky's life, and not for the better. But Bialosky, a person who cannot imagine committing suicide herself, is unable to penetrate the mind-set of someone who not only could, but did. At the end of the book, I got the feeling that she was no more enlightened than at the start, and that her book really has little to offer curious readers except a tale of suffering and woe. I felt Bialosky's pain, but I am no closer to understanding suicide. She writes well. Grade: B