I don’t mean to make too light of Perry’s experiences, or to imply that After the Ecplipse aims to wrap everything up in a nice, neat box. Even as she struggled in relationships and through her own issues, she managed to always land on her feet and build a happy life for her daughter (even if, as it turns out, she was not so happy herself). Crystal seemed to impart a resilience to Perry long before her death. I didn’t get the sense that it was Crystal’s death that had forced Perry to be wise beyond her years, but rather that she was able to cope and grow into herself because of her mother’s strong influence.
Reading Perry’s words not only left me with a profound respect for her both as a person and a writer, but also with a deep respect for Crystal. While carefully detailing her life with, and then without, her mother, Crystal, Perry manages to examine the rippling effects of her grandmother’s co-dependent, abusive relationships on her children, and also comes to grips with the fraught lives of her mother’s friends and partners with sage-like wisdom and empathy. Sarah Perry’s memoir, After the Eclipse, is not only a heartbreaking account of the worst possible scenario, your mother’s violent murder taking place in the next room while you sleep, but it is also a valuable exploration of victimhood and survival.
In a culture that is fixated on violence as entertainment, and is becoming increasingly desensitized to random acts of manslaughter, it’s easy to forget that murder is not only a horrific plot device or a stomach-dropping headline we don’t really give much time or attention to victims of crime for very long before we move on to the next big thing.
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