Showing results by narrator "Meghan O'Rourke" in All Categories

A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: These are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier.

What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of 55, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of grief - an endeavor that ultimately bloomed into a profound look at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond.

The New York Times best-selling author of the literary page-turner The Emperor's Children discusses her richly drawn new novel, The Woman Upstairs, with Meghan O'Rourke ( The Long Goodbye). Her latest release is a riveting compulsively readable (and listenable) confession of a 37-year-old elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Mass, drawn into the complex world of her new neighbors - a Lebanese scholar and professor of Ethical History, his glamorous Italian artist wife, and their son.