Getting to Know Death could just as easily be called Getting to Know Life. As a meditation, it is both unsentimental and full of wonder. As a piece of writing, it stands beside the best of Godwin's fiction. Extraordinary.

Ann Patchett

Old friends now, Gail Godwin and I met as students in Kurt Vonnegut's writing class. With insightful reflection, as she prepares herself for the inevitable, Gail has recalled the loved ones she's lost-in the same crystalline prose that distinguishes her fiction. This book makes me remember the loved ones I've lost, in all the good ways. I wrote Gail that I especially loved the part about the man who thought she was a nun. He just mistook her dedication to writing for a different kind of devotion-one that also requires sacrifice.

John Irving

Radiant ... Without her accident, Godwin would never have met individuals she now cherishes, her roommate at a rehabilitation center and her home health care worker chief among them. It is this that endures for her, along with writing and reading: not a power base in money or wealth or reputation, or an identity founded on any of that, but the possibility of newness and discovery in the ever-surprising form of other people. This, at least, never gets old.

Laura Miller, Slate

A powerful and poetic reflection on death, dying, and what constitutes a good life . . . Throughout, [Godwin's] tone is curious and vaguely wonderstruck, resulting in an account that's full of insight and free of platitude. This is a gift.

Publishers Weekly

[Getting to Know Death is] treasure trove of remembrance and candor . . . For Godwin, the author of 14 novels and two collections of short stories, writing is a form of prayer. Her faithfulness to her craft and the immersive nature of that craft allow her to probe profound questions.

Washington Independent Review of Books

This slim book is a very rich memoir. It's poignant and resonant. We see how the author struggles to continue to manage a creative life and to negotiate new ways to hold on to the passions from a long life and shape them in ways that allow her to continue to write stories with new beginnings-but also with endings that she can continue to accept through her thoughtful meditation.

Texas Public Radio, "Book Public"