There are things I dislike in Geraldine Brooks's work. The titles are often bland. "March," "Foreign Correspondence," "Horse." There is little or no evidence of a sense of humor. And there is a distressing fondness for cliche; the new memoir opens with a catastrophic 3 AM phone call and ends with a "primal scream." (This is how an undergraduate would structure a "sad memories" essay for a writing seminar.) Brooks's dead husband, Tony Hurwtiz, seems sort of obnoxious. In life, he swore off butter and dessert. (Good grief.) He seemed to mock everyone around him, to the extent that a guitarist discussed this trait at his (Hurwitz's) funeral. When Hurwitz read Joan Didion's memoir for an awards adjudication job, it seems he could note only the memoir's "padded" quality and its interest in name-dropping. There isn't more to say about that book? Brooks never writes, "It might seem like my husband was s...