Sushi Tuesdays
A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Resilience
Charlotte Maya’s moving memoir Sushi Tuesdays covers how she survived the death of a loved one.
The book is set during the aftermath of Maya’s husband’s suicide on a “perfectly ordinary Sunday.” He had stayed home to take a nap while she went to a soccer game with their children. Instead of resting, though, he jumped off of a parking structure in Pasadena.
Maya navigates the immediate days after Sam’s suicide, detailing the most intimate stages of the tragedy and her family’s grief. She covers her last conversation with her husband; the instant she realized that he was missing; and the moment she saw police cars in front of her house before stretching into the days, months, and years following her husband’s death.
Maya’s account is powerful both because it is intimate and because it is matter-of-fact. It includes important details of the couple’s life together, portraying her husband as a real person and not just a character in a tragic story. Its pages include the handwritten note that Sam left behind, fleshing out his state of mind before he died. He is said to have loved his family “with his life, and … hurt them with his death.”
As Maya reconciles her competing ideas of Sam—he was both kind and devoted, and a man hurled himself off of a building—she covers her consequent anger, too. She dares to answer the questions that most people would be afraid to ask a widow, explores loneliness, and bemoans how people “assumed she was fixed” just two years after Sam’s death.
With its practical advice for people in similar situations, Sushi Tuesdays is a touching memoir about love, suicide, and resilience.
Reviewed by
Anna Maria Colivicchi
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
