Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.

In her memoir, The Girls, Chloe Higgins references a number of grief memoirs. Some were familiar to me, others not.

Second Half First by Drusilla Modjeska

Summary: Modjeska looks back on the experiences that have shaped her writing, her reading and her life, including her time as a young newlywed living with her husband in Papua New Guinea; arriving as a single woman in Sydney in the 1970s and building close friendships with writers such as Helen Garner.

I’m thinking: Yes.

Wave: A Memoir of Life After the Tsunami by Sonali Deraniyagala

Summary: On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. She describes how she has learnt to live with the unbearable reminders of her loss and the need to keep her family, somehow, still alive within her.

I’m thinking: Yes.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Summary: Patti Smith  reflects on her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies.

I’m thinking: No – I think it’s one for fans.