I'm Not Supposed to Be Writing This

When John Kenney’s mother died in 1974, the Boston Globe ran her obituary. It was just 74 words long. And they spelled her name wrong. To the world, she was no one. To twelve-year-old John, she was the center of the world. After writing his bestselling novel about an obituary writer, I See You’ve Called in Dead, Kenney couldn’t stop thinking about the impossibility of summing up a person’s life in just 74 words. And once he started writing his mother’s story, he couldn’t stop. I’m Not Supposed to Be Writing This is a son’s reckoning with memory, the mother he lost, and the woman he never got a chance to know. It’s a luminous, powerful memoir about the long tail of grief—the ways it hides, the ways it shapes us, and what it means, finally, to mourn someone fully, even if it takes half a lifetime to find the words.