"Brilliant." - The American Association of Suicidology

"A masterpiece! Gambotto is an enormously lyrical, evocative and sensitive writer. Enfant terrible of Australian journalism and author of best-selling The Pure Weight of the Heart, Antonella Gambotto has turned her formidable pen and linguistic wizardry to an astonishing account of the experience of love and loss ... An important memoir about loss, the book hypnotizes the reader and offers insight and compassion that is startling."
- Michael Rakusin, Tower Books

"A wonderful read ... beautifully written."
- Louise France, Review editor, The Observer (London)

"The translator succeeds in preserving the author's full-bodied language; the text enthralls, it leaves the reader as naked and vulnerable as the author has been."
- Finnish author Anna-Leena Härkönen on The Eclipse [please click here for full text]

"While not a typical self-help book, Gambotto allows a certain personal vulnerability in her writing as she tells the story of her own process of grief that any survivor of suicide or other loss can relate to. She quotes accurate statistics that help readers grasp the truth about suicide: 'For every suicide it is estimated that there are six deeply affected survivors, and the World Health Organization reported one million suicides in 2000,' and reminds us that approximately '30,000 Americans kill themselves each year.'

"In a recent interview, Gambotto stated: 'Bereavement by suicide is one of the greatest challenges known to man. In The Eclipse, I ask: How can I work with this? Because that was my question. It all boils down to perception. Do you perceive bereavement as a curse, a form of punishment, or a challenge? The good news is: perception can be changed.' She talked about the different phases of her grief process: 'During those first burning and unearthly six months, I dismantled my life philosophy, examined it, and then adjusted it to suit my new world – that is to say, the world in which I was a bereaved sister. This was the most important work I have ever undertaken, and I am glad I deflected he expectations of others (write! get back to work! put it behind you! etc.) to do it. In retrospect, it saved my life.'

"The Eclipse is recommended for anyone searching for the meaning of loss in his/her life, for the support and wisdom of another survivor, and for inspiration about life after loss. One of the most simple, yet powerful messages taken from The Eclipse is: 'In suffering, we are presented with opportunities to overcome. In overcoming, we inspire. In inspiring, we strengthen the collective will to live. There is no greater gift we can give ourselves.'

"Finally, Gambotto sends the message, 'As human beings, we have a responsibility to the world. We are taught to limit our sense of belonging to the tiny unit that is our biological family, and then to our city, and then to our country, but we do not consider our true allegiance, which is to life itself. We are living creatures. Our context is consciousness, and consciousness involves pain. So if we learn to redefine ourselves in the context of consciousness, acceptance of pain blooms. It's no longer a struggle.'”
- American Association of Suicidology Magazine

"Philologists often hold the view that language can be deceptive. A stone is a stone, but the word 'stone' is not a stone, it is merely a token, a linguistic banknote that we exchange to indicate the idea of a stone.

"The language of Antonella Gambotto's The Eclipse is anything but deceptive. Rarely have I read a personal account of life, death and survival and been left feeling so buffeted, punched, pummeled and yet strangely uplifted.

"The 'plot' is too frightening to be fiction. Gambotto tells us about the devastating losses, through suicide of two 'beloveds' in her life – Michael VerMeulen, American editor of British GQ, and Gianluca, her brother.

"Gambotto's anguished roar - her intellectual acumen and her erudition ensure no hushed tones bow reverentially to the presence of death. With haunting description, she takes all that grief at its worst can offer, holds her ground, and then fights back with inspiring thoughts on survival.

"The Eclipse is compulsively written ... the narrative bubbles and boils with wonderful language of the heart, whilst her generosity of spirit, arising from a spiritual awakening, infuses the pages and uplifts us all."
- Maurice Taylor, psychologist, NSW Coroner's Court

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come …

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

"When I started reading The Eclipse, it was this poem that came to mind. W.H Auden writes about loss as debilitating and overwhelming … it took me a while to pick up The Eclipse. Then I got hooked. You might find the subject difficult and you might not want to involve yourself, but I found that her writing was so evocative, so forceful and emotional without being at all draining, that it was hard not to keep reading once I had taken the plunge."
- Book reviewer Allison Lee, Radio 94.5FM

"Brilliant."
- Depression Alliance (London)

"Honest, moving and reflective ... at its heart is intense grief. [Gambotto] has lost more than her share of lovers and friends. She describes a period of her youth when she swallowed handfuls of Valium and sawed at her wrists with a blunt knife in a hopeless attempt to kill herself ... she also presents the hard facts, showing that during the past 45 years suicide rates worldwide have increased by 60 per cent ... [a] comfortingly honest account of the hellishness and black humour such events can bring ... Throughout the book, Gambotto asks: Does any man have the right to dispose of his own life? She supplies conflicting theories of philosophers and thinkers from Plato to the present ... She finds that the answer is no."
- The South China Morning Post

"At a time when 30,000 Americans - mainly guys such as the late and very great Elliott Smith - kill themselves each year, Oz goddess Gambotto's heartbreaking meditation on (and around) her brother's suicide in 2001 could not be more timely. I urge anyone who struggles with depression and fantasies of self-murder to acquire and read this brave and brilliant book."
- Rocksbackpages.com (London)

"If people thought Gambotto had been silenced, here's the newsbreak: she's back. But her latest book, The Eclipse, is unlike anything she has written before, created as it was from the saddest of catalysts: the suicide of her brother, Gianluca. After her former fiancé, GQ editor Michael VerMeulen, overdosed on cocaine in 1995, 'the repercussions of impacted grief made me a workaholic'; after Gianluca's carefully planned death in a gas-filled car in 2001, she was 'emotionally eviscerated … I had to identify his body and arrange his funeral, which I had to put on Visa'.

"She found, however, that she could still barely function, let alone write: 'I couldn't even listen to music because everything – sound, color – was too amplified.' (Whilst her grief was 'incapacitating', she doesn't want to suggest 'that my brother and I had a milk and honey relationship – we fought like devils all our lives but I loved him with a great passion.') During this time, she read obsessively on death and on suicide, 'trying to make sense of the experience, trying to become big enough to let go of my brother. That's what bereavement is about – surrendering the memory, the relationship.'

"After six months, she suddenly started writing The Eclipse, 'or rather, it wrote itself and I just held on to the keyboard'. Subtitled A Memoir of Suicide, she saw it as 'a way of honoring Gianluca but more widely, as a way of helping others who have experienced the same thing. It's not just a memoir, it's also a look at grief, an examination of [roles], and perceptions of the way we go through life with particular sets of values attached to our roles – but when you lose the context, who are you?'”
- Weekend Australian (Review) national cover story

"When they were both five, a blond boy with 'rueful eyes' asked Gambotto to marry him; at 16, he blew his brains out. Later, her lover, Michael VerMeulen, the editor of GQ magazine, overdosed on cocaine. Then in 2001, her brother gassed himself in a car. He left an apologetic note to his unknown discoverers, reassuring them that the gas was not explosive and asking the police to return the rented empty tank to the shop. He thought of everything - yet his family and friends were left only with a terrible perplexity. Gambotto's account is intense and moving, and she vividly captures her brother's troubled character."
- The Sunday Times (London)

"I read The Eclipse through at one sitting, gripped as by Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. It's an astonishing, deep and beautiful book."
- Nicholas Humphrey, Professor of Philosophy, London School of Economics

"[T]he seminal work on suicide loss and recovery."
- K. Krausman, SOLOS-sibs

"Nine people in Antonella Gambotto's life have committed suicide, including her great love and her brother. In her eloquently written book she shares the story of how she moved through and beyond her grief."
- Wellbeing

"Very moving."
- Cathy Osmond, The Australian

"Under any circumstance the death of a loved one presents a complex and profound emotional burden that is undiminished by the universality of the experience. But the spiritual and emotional toll rises considerably when life's inevitable conclusion is hastened by suicide. Suicide, and the turmoil left in its wake, provides both fuel and fire for Antonella Gambotto's The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide.

"Presented in three sections, The Eclipse recounts how suicide has shadowed Gambotto. The book focuses primarily on two suicides: the 1995 overdose death of Michael VerMeulen -- the deeply troubled American editor of British GQ with whom she carried on a tumultuous and often violent affair; and the death in October 2001 of her beloved brother, Gianluca.

"While the latter event certainly triggered the brilliant and beautiful emotional deluge captured in this book, it is the cumulative toll of these suicides that drives a narrative both haunting and irresistible. Startlingly honest and deeply personal, The Eclipse describes the author's passage through the emotional rubble left in the aftermath of the self-destruction of people with whom she had the deepest human connection.

"Gambotto's account of her [engagement to] VerMeulen dominates the first section of the book. Given a cast of characters that includes familiar names from the worlds of journalism, literature, and film, the story has elements one might expect to find in a bestselling novel of the sort that ends up as a Lifetime network movie of the week. But the reader encounters instead the diametric opposite of melodrama, a stark emotional reality expressed through the author's remarkable literary gifts.

"The middle section of the book deals with the suicide of Gianluca Gambotto, a likeable man whose intelligence and gift for wry humor masked crippling self-doubt and depression. The circumstances and particulars of Gianluca's suicide are harrowing in their depiction of the utter sadness from which he sought escape.

"But there is far more to The Eclipse than sadness and death. It is the author's exploration of the frontiers of grief and near madness that gives this book its enormous power. As a record of her effort to process the anguish, to triumph over the impenetrable gloom, The Eclipse accomplishes something remarkable. Beneath the terrible weight of the events she describes, Gambotto finds the tiny, waning ember of life and fans it into flame.

"The third and final section of the book describes Gambotto's spiritual and emotional reawakening as she comes to terms with the reality of her brother's passing. But she strikes no truce with death by suicide. Indeed, reshaped by these wrenching events, Gambotto emerges as a formidable activist, whose utter rejection of conventional treatments for depression -- and of the euthanasia movement -- is likely to add new fuel to an already heated debate. On a less political note, her observations and conclusions on the nature and purpose of grief and on matters of spirituality are relayed in language that reveals a breathtaking blend of intellectual prowess and artistic sensibility. Gambotto's exploration of the issues she confronts is both philosophical and emotional, but steers clear of sappy New Age sentimentality.

"While suicide provides the thematic core of The Eclipse, the book, as the title suggests, is about passing through shadow. Antonella Gambotto's unique ability to describe that passage infuses the book with a vibrancy and life that more than balances the depressing nature of the subject matter. In the end, The Eclipse is about embracing life, and all that it entails."
- Bob Rhubart, Cool Cleveland (USA)

"Gambotto shares with us not only her deepest love for her brother but out of this love, gives us very precise and important information on suicide. This makes The Eclipse a must-read book for people who live with this pain and for those who feel they can help those with suicidal intent."
- Gilles Bedard (Canada)

"The Eclipse is incredible ... searingly truthful ... this subject matter does not mean that Antonella has lost any of the steel-sharp style for which she is renowned. Although it is a book about loss, it would be unwise to group it in that self-help category, full of maudlin self-indulgence, that the bookshelves are flooded with these days. Through her own loss, Antonella questions the Judeo-Christian conditioning that affects the way society views death, an attitude that is particularly evident when someone takes their own life ... Outspoken, skin-prickling intelligence ... a massive intellect."
- Yoga (UK)

"The Eclipse is a chronicle of an agonizing double loss to suicide: first the author's great love, and - dizzyingly shortly after - her precious younger brother. Antonella Gambotto draws the reader in from the book's very beginning: her writing is extraordinarily intense ... the tale is hypnotizing. As The Age so eloquently put it: The writing is ... like being unable to stop staring into the sun when you've been told it damages your eyes.

"Part of the book's strange attraction is its view into the outrageous and ultimately deadly private life of Michael VerMeulen, legendary American editor of British GQ. But this slightly tabloid stuff is more than balanced by Gambotto's highly detailed, serious research into suicide statistics.

"Seemingly miraculously, the author does recover from the devastation and has some really striking thoughts about surviving tragedy. In a letter to a fellow survivor, she writes: 'Our hearts have been broken, but not in the way you think. Some kind of protective shell or covering has been smashed, leaving the heart raw and exposed - hence the pain - but actually more capable of love.'

"The Eclipse is challenging both intellectually and emotionally and leaves the reader with a feeling that (s)he should start again at the beginning, so packed is it with fact and detail and passion."
- Lucire.com

"Previous reviewers have remarked on [Gambotto's] wonderful ability to describe emotions and events, to allow the reader to conjure up vivid mental images. For example, 'The chicken feet of sewing machine left their imprint on hems. A river of fabric flowed amongst those bowed black heads.' And, on having received news of her brother's suicide and, while being driven to the morgue to identify his body, she states: 'The confinement of the police car, two strangers, two guns; it was asphyxiating. In that moment, I inhaled a knife. The policewoman drove as if the roads had not cracked under loss. She drove as if the road rules still applied." ...

"People generally have a very poor understanding of their effect on others - Antonella 'gets it' ...

"Her attempt to understand her brother's suicide is insightful: 'In wanting to kill himself, a man wants only to kill his consciousness of pain. I think, therefore I am; therefore if I am not, I cannot think. A suicidal man may misinterpret a call for an end to suffering as a call for self-destruction.' ...

"She shows her concern for the effect on the police subjected to the investigation of her brother's death. It is not usual or common for people to feel that degree of empathy - another clue as to why the tragic events of her life have scarred her so deeply ...

"I recommend this book to everyone. It is an important insight into a poorly understood topic."
- The Village Journal (Australia)

"[Gambotto] might have invented a new genre."
- Louis de Bernieres, author

"The Eclipse is a book you will never regret reading."
- Mick Mercer, editor, Panache (UK)

... and from Laura McCreddie's interview with Antonella ...

Considering The Eclipse is very personal, was it hard to write?

"It was absolutely terrifying. I have never written anything as frank or remotely as personal, but deeply felt that I had no choice. After my brother committed suicide, I could not write for six months. I couldn't laugh, I stopped listening to music – and I absolutely love listening to music – I put all my belongings into storage, and left the city. For ten months, I actually felt oppressed by bright colors. I have never known anything like it. The sense of loss was beyond description.

"My brother was 32. Genius IQ. Hysterically funny. Very successful. Women all over him, friends everywhere. But so isolated, you know? Enormously angry. Lost. Very poor coping mechanisms. I was the person closest to him. We were no longer speaking. His behavior had grown increasingly aggressive over the years and he refused to take responsibility, so I stepped back. I had to, you know? To survive. But suicide? My brother? Never. Not even in the realm of possibility. So the shock was … it was a decapitation. My own private World Trade Center Attack. With one telephone call, the landscape of my life was forever altered. I didn't have to stand on my head. The world turned upside-down instead.

"My brother was the person I most loved. He was my memory. I blocked out a lot of family stuff, you know? He was my witness. I loved him. And there I was, standing in a morgue – God, I'm starting to cry remembering this – looking down at his gassed corpse. He used to reach for my hand when he was a little boy. It was - I just … I thought I would die, too, just like that. I couldn't make a sound. My baby brother, cold. God, I almost lost my mind.

"After six months, I started writing and could not stop. It was as if The Eclipse were dictated. The first draft was written in two months. I was fuelled by sheer love – love for Michael, love for my brother, my heart just cracked open. I resurrected them with ink.

"I wanted to create a book that would explain the basic philosophical flaw at the heart of all suicidal impulse. I wanted to explain depression as a valid emotional response rather than as a disease. I wanted to create something that would comfort the bereaved. Our culture is one in which death is feared. Death is the dragon. This view is mostly the result of Judeo-Christian conditioning. Death as the enemy, all that. Eternal suffering! Pitchforks! I mean, who wouldn't be scared? When I told a friend about The Eclipse, he was horrified. The words 'tragedy' and 'sewer' came up in relation to death. I was amazed. Death as a sewer! No wonder people are terrified! When I talk about suicide, very few people seem to cope. They don't know how. To them, death is a tragedy. And suicide is twinned with shame. But I am not ashamed of my brother, and I do not see death as tragic - deliberate ignorance and fear are tragedies, not death.

"Above all, The Eclipse is a love letter to my brother. I wanted to thank him for allowing me to be his sister. It was a great privilege. Everything good I am today is, in part, due to him."

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