Waiting For You at Midnight

By Vicki Salloum

Moonshine Cove     2018

240 pages     Fiction

In Waiting For You At Midnight, Vicki Salloum’s intimate look at grief is raw and very real—so real, in fact, that the reader forgets that it is a novel.

When Arabella Joseph’s husband Logan died of cancer in 2015, she is overcome with grief and fear. She muses, “What am I going to do without you? That is the quintessential question. How can I live a life without you? I am without any defenses. I am scared and alone and in pain.”

The narrative alternates between Arabella’s remembrances of her relationship with Logan and her struggles to move forward with her life after his death. She feels that she was only a whole person when she was with him and she initially has no understanding of what to do and when to do it.

Arabella is a writer, but also a long-time recovered alcoholic/drug addict, so her associates and friends are the people that she meets at the recovery meetings she attends on a nearly daily basis. She looks to the people in the group for friendship and companionship, but her grief and longing is so intense that she is worried that she will relapse. The relationships are powerful, and many of her recovery friends are very supportive and helpful to her. A couple of the men she meets at the meetings are interested in a relationship with her, but they also carry a great deal of baggage.

I was particularly interested in her contemplation on grief and loss. I understood the tragic journey a spouse takes when his/her partner is suffering from cancer—the dissociation, the anger, the unspeakable inability to “solve the problem.” My favorite parts, however, have less to do with Arabella’s struggles after Logan’s death than with the beautiful story of their relationship—how they found each other, how the accepted each other’s failings, and how they grew a loving and engaged marriage.

I wondered about why she wanted to have another relationship so quickly, and why she chose such damaged men to anticipate having a relationship with. Her loneliness was palpable, but the book’s climax doesn’t offer any relief from the pain which continues beyond the book’s climax. The book just stops.

This is not a cheerful book nor is it easy to read. I began it at the beach but had to put it away until I was in a more appropriate setting at home. I did, however, email the author, because in the bio it said that her husband had recently died, and the book was dedicated to him and his life. I asked her why she chose to write a novel rather than a memoir. Here is what she said: “I choose to write my book as fiction because only part of it is autobiographical.  A big part of it is imagination.  Several major events in the book did not happen and many characters in the book, through inspired by people I know, were made up.  When I write, I sometimes start off with what I know and then, working in the unconscious, the imagination takes over and the result is an imaginary world that is only partly autobiographical.  However, in Waiting for You at Midnight, the voice and mood are very real.  The book, written as fiction, accomplished what I wanted it to:  it served as a tribute to my husband.  My love for him was in that book and that's all that counts.”

The value of Waiting for You at Midnight lies in its ability to help the reader understand the depth of the grief experience. At times, it almost was so close to my own grief experience that I had to catch my breath. Another book that is similar in tone but a memoir is You are Not Alone by Debbie Augenthaler.