Joan Cusack Handler’s parents are so vivid in this memoir that they fly off the page. How often in a daughter’s memoir—here a memoir of her Irish Catholic parents, new to New York and bringing up a family in the 1950’s—can you actually feel the voices of the family? Orphans is not just in Handler’s voice, but in the voices of her parents, carefully recorded and presented with blasts of personality, joie de vivre, sadness, shame, religious fervor, cruelty, anger, thrill and celebration. What’s so magnificent about Orphans is that Handler fearlessly uses the whole palette of human emotions. Her gentle father with his commitment to God and her ferocious mother with the threats of the backside of her hand both bloom in this book. With guilt and backward glances, with acceptance and adult fulfillment, Handler, also author of Confessions of Joan the Tall, makes us know that voice is life itself. She gives us a tapestry of retrospection, and, as a side benefit to the stories of a man and a woman and their four children, a path for how to live.

Orphans by Joan Cusack Handler is a poignant and deeply introspective exploration of familial bonds, loss, and the enduring legacy of trauma. Through her lyrical prose and multi-layered narrative structure, Handler invites readers into the complex inner worlds of her characters, where the echoes of past sorrows reverberate through generations. Even though the book is fairly autobiographical, Orphans leaves the audience with a sense of relatability because the themes it touches upon are universally resonant. The feeling of guilt over unresolved issues with a loved one, the complexities of dysfunctional family dynamics, and the search for healing and reconciliation are experiences that many can relate to.

In Orphans, with verses, memoirs, and psychology, Handler explores primitive and essential relationships. Relationships with parents and those parents who are aging, particularly the intense confusion that stems from the truth of their impending death while writing about her losses, grief, and experiences. She opens up her own stories and is vulnerable, and brave, and talks about difficult topics with loss, love, and relationships dealing with loss and grief.