Revised 10th Anniversary Edition

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When Jessica Teich happens upon the obituary of a fellow Rhodes scholar named Lacey, she vows to unravel the truth behind the young woman’s suicide. As Lacey’s story unspools, Teich begins to detect haunting links to her own life, forcing her to reflect on her own anguished past. A tender, profoundly affecting book, The Future Tense of Joy immerses readers in the fluid shifts between past and present, as each woman struggles to free herself from the ghosts of her memory. The book defies genres to tell the stories of two talented, troubled women, each trying to reclaim her future and find strength and consolation in the embrace of the people she loves.

“‘No one was less likely to take her own life.’ That’s what her Oxford thesis advisor said. From the moment I stumbled across her obituary, late at night when I couldn’t sleep, I was captivated. This brilliant woman seemed incandescent. She was gifted and generous and beloved. Twenty-six years old, and a newlywed. Why would she decide to die?”

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“Jessica Teich’s understanding of trauma is the infallible authority upon which her tale rests. But the delicacy and nuance with which she renders this story is that of a poet. This beautiful, compassionately imagined book will bring a pang of recognition to anyone who has traveled to young adulthood from a wounded adolescence via the quest for ‘perfection.’”  —MERYL STREEP  

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Politics and Prose: Book Talk

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Survivors remember the past in pieces. Not necessarily “before” and “after,” which would be easier. It’s more like time melts into Dali-like puddles, or convulses, slamming together faces and events. Psychologists often speak of a distortion in time afterward, as though the trauma occurred only moments before, but sometimes the pain is so buried it ceases to exist. Then it springs up suddenly, like an allergy, even when it seems there’s no irritant. Or descends, like a fine but malevolent mesh.

That was true for me, but I could never write about my experience as a “survivor.” Even the word seemed bloodless, badly lit. I’d had so many privileges: an education at Yale, then at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. I had a lovely husband and children; two daughters with their father’s long lashes and love of puns. But I felt trapped behind a scrim, like the smoked glass of an antique mirror, with life on the other side, tantalizing and remote. What happened when I was a child was holding me hostage, as surely as if I’d been stolen away.

There is a moment, stepping onto a plane, when you may hesitate at the threshold, nervous to leave the safety of one world, uncertain of the world beyond. This book takes place at that juncture, a crucial moment for my family, when I tried to make the pieces of my life cohere. Its sections are like those shards of experience, but the path they chart is not specific to me. For we have all been broken or betrayed.

Life is the part that happens after. When we move toward hope, toward peace, toward the healing of our hearts.

Read an excerpt

People in movies tend to “meet cute,” when their dog leashes become entangled or they swap suitcases by accident. New parents have their own version of this time-honored ritual. It’s called “meeting low.” They are digging with their children in the sandbox, or putting on shoes at preschool, or sitting cross-legged on the floor at story time. [Brandel and I] met on the floor of a yoga center in Los Angeles, where we were attending an unusual parenting course. In the movies, the couple falls in love, has some madcap adventures, argues, and resolves their differences by the closing, soon-to-be-Oscar-nominated song. We fell in “like,” compared notes on our careers as writers, and began talking about writing the kind of parenting book we longed for but could never find.

We discovered, during that first talk, that we and our friends needed parenting books that respected us as sentient beings, tired though we were. We’re all mothers who think and care and wonder and worry. What we’re not is people with lots of time on our hands. We began to imagine a book that would tackle some of the toughest challenges of parenting, without becoming one of those “exhaustive” books on child-rearing that become exhausting to read. We believe that all parents want to thrive in concert with their children and that, although nine months can seem an eternity when your feet swell or your stomach revolts, it’s never enough time to become the parent you want to be The result is an intuitive and eclectic approach to raising children, based largely on observation and experience. Our book advises you to do less, listen more, speak directly to your newborn, involve your infant in her own care, and treat this mewling creature with the same respect you give your partner, and yourself.