Rise Above by Matthew Schnipper... An unforgettable memoir of fatherhood, grief, and the life-saving power of love and art in the wake of unimaginable loss.
Renzo Rollins Schnipper was born in February 2020, a split second before the beginning of the pandemic. To his parents, he was the reason for the universe’s existence at a time when there was little hope to be found in the world. Then, on Christmas Eve 2021, a rare medical event suddenly took Renzo from them. Rise Above begins with an account of Renzo’s short, but blazingly full, life from his father’s perspective. Even as it is an account of grief, Matthew Schnipper’s memoir is about resilience in the face of the unexpected turns life takes, and how to chart a path forward.
Schnipper chronicles the tragic, frustrating, and sometimes dumb ways that grief manifests, and how he tried to rise above the pain: friendships, text messages, carbs, a trip to Miami, phone calls with a rabbi, selling vintage clothing—and, perhaps most indelibly, his ever-changing relationship to music, his lifelong passion.
Rise Above follows this journey—from the shock and freefall following his son’s death, to the desperate struggle to remember and honor Renzo’s life. Schnipper’s candid prose and clear-eyed storytelling tackles the darkest, most unfathomable elements of living, but also the miracle of love and the shimmering moments that ultimately give life meaning.
I oftentimes read about the "coming soon" books of Kirkus Reviews. And I always make a mental note about the starred reviews, those reviews where the reviewer feels the book is outstanding. Rise Above by Matthew Schnipper was one of those books.
This book tugged at my heart. The loss of a child. A baby... How could they go on?! How could he write about the loss? Then I started to read a sample and was turned off a tad by the author. He started telling the story of him playing music for his baby... death metal music. Omg... okay, I'm not really familiar with death metal, so I brought up iTunes on the computer and played Immortal Rites by Morbid Angel. Okay, now I understood what death metal music was, and thought this is not going to be my kind of book... until I read a little further. His description of death metal and why he listened to it made sense. Not that I would listen to it, but I understood.
Then he wrote how he didn't know the lyrics because they were "wholly unintelligible... like a satanic dog barking"... and then he looked up the lyrics and was shocked. I was shocked. It was awful... and you'll find out if you read it too. It was at this point that I started to really like Matthew Schnippers writing and found it sensitive, caring, not some metalhead writing about his life, but a man writing about the terrible loss of his son. On my TBR list. To be published on July 21st by Random House.
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