The actual printed book, as it turns out, doesn’t feel quite real at all. This is my conclusion after finding an Express Post satchel on my doorstep this afternoon when I got home from work, containing two finished copies of The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement. Relief, as if I had just crossed some invisible finish line, coursed through me like a rush of blood. I didn’t burst into tears, as I suspected I might, but felt sad and happy all at once. I picked up my book, turned it over, felt its weight; it seemed so contained and precise, when real life is chaotic and unfinished. One of the differences between a memoir and the life from which it’s written, I suppose.