This small book, written in the aftermath of the sudden death of Rona Cran’s younger sister, is an attempt to give shape to the landscape of grief. In its relentless and fragmentary form, I Remember Kim is at once a memoir about a lost sister and a chronicle of disintegration, a collage of memories that is as much a coming-together as it is a falling-apart, an examination of the failure of memory, of memories, of memoir. This is a book about sisters; about survival, and the insufficiency of survival; and about how to remember when all you want to do is forget.
‘Never has Joe Brainard’s pioneering format been put to more haunting, heart-breaking use than in I Remember Kim. This kaleidoscopic elegy movingly explores the complex, double-edged compensations of memory, oscillating between vibrant vignettes of sisterly love and bleak, serial snapshots of the onslaught of grief. A tour de force.’ Mark Ford