This Angel on My Chest

Leslie Pietrzyk’s collection of short stories, This Angel on My Chest (2015), stems from the author’s unexpected loss early in life—her first husband suddenly died at age 37. The stories use this kind of tragedy as a jumping-off point; each is about a different young woman facing the same circumstances, each trying to get at some true aspect of the experience of shock, grief, rage, coping strategies, and eventual recovery. The stories range in tone, length (some are as short as a couple of paragraphs, some span more than 40 pages), and form: While many are written in traditional prose, some are experimentally structured as a list, a multiple choice quiz, a multimedia presentation, or a classroom lecture about creative writing. Critics praise Pietrzyk’s work, which won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, an independent short fiction award whose winners are chosen by famed short story writer Jill McCorkle.

The first story in the collection, “Ten Things,” written as a list, inventories 10 memories of things the narrating widow’s dead husband used to joke about. Each of the list items is poignantly irony in light of the husband’s early death—particularly an in-joke he and the narrator shared about him dying young.

“Acquiescence” is a microfiction about a woman who flies alongside her husband’s body to his funeral. There, she confesses to her mother-in-law that she is worried he was interred upside down inside the casket. The older woman comforts her, but the widow snaps mean-spiritedly. Then she feels bad about reacting that way on her flight back.



“A Quiz” is a multiple-choice quizlet, in which a recently widowed woman wonders about how to react to daily situations. Say an attractive man approaches her at a party. Should she be flirty or honest about her bereavement and lack of interest? What about when a stranger asks her for directions in a grocery store? Should she reply helpfully or with the info that her health food eating husband still died of an aneurysm? The woman always chooses the socially unacceptable option that burdens the other person with her pain.

In the vignette “Heat,” cranking the thermostat reminds a widow of the back and forth she and her husband used to have about turning up the heat. Now she doesn’t have to compromise with his preference for cold.

The discursive and digressive “In a Dream” is about a memorable vacation a young wife and husband took in Nogales, Mexico. Vivid images of their conversations, promises to each other, and enjoyment of the scenery contrast with her now widowed state.



“One Art” is a written piece that is accompanied by a YouTube video of Pietrzyk performing as the character in her story. She reads the piece as though the character were sharing her experiences at a story-telling venue like The Moth.

“Do You Believe in Ghosts?” is a more traditional narrative. In it, while conversing with an unnamed “you” in a dark corner of a neighborhood bar, a widow considers the ways in which she and her husband were sexually unfaithful to each other during their short marriage.

The theme of sexual constancy recurs in “Slut,” which finds Nicole, a widow out on her first date many years after the death of her husband. To her conflicting feelings of shame and defiance, her dead husband’s brother happens to be dining in the same restaurant.



“I am the Widow” portrays the rage and self-absorbed insensitivity that goes along with grief. A woman undone by her loss picks fights with her family and friends during her husband’s funeral, furiously insulting them and the objects they choose to leave inside the grave as memorials.

Critically heralded, the story “One True Thing” is a lecture delivered at a writer's retreat in New England by Vanessa whose husband, Michael, unexpectedly died nine weeks earlier. She offers a talk about “point of view” and proceeds to describe his death from many different vantage points: collective first person, third person limited, omniscient, and other narrative devices. Each of the examples transforms the event, recounting it in ways that implicate the writers in the audience, all of whom knew the man.

“Someone in Nebraska,” written in the second person, tells the story of a widow who has gone out of her way to talk to a bartender who lived through a heart attack when she was young. The bartender describes being clinically dead for 25 minutes, during which she saw a white light and her dead sister. This comforts the listener—maybe her husband was met by his dead grandmother.



In “What I Could Buy,” a widow contemplates the many things that her husband’s life insurance could buy now that he has died. These range from luxurious to philanthropic, but the cold monetary nature of the calculations drives home the point that this money does not help the widow’s healing.

The classroom setting returns in “Truth-Telling for Adults,” which features Jinx, a widow urging her students to use the memoirs they are learning to write to get at the difference between “honesty” and “truth.” The story is self-referential—this book we are reading might not be the factual truth of Pietrzyk’s experience, but she does her best to be honest about the emotional range of grief.

“Chapter Ten: An Index of Food (Draft)” takes the form of a book proposal the narrator is assembling for her editor. When she began the project, her now-dead husband would edit her entries and make suggestions. Now, each food only reminds her of a time they shared.



“The Circle” describes the later stages of grief. When a newly widowed woman joins a support group for bereaved spouses, her raw pain is strange to the group’s other members, all of whom have passed through this phase and are now experiencing pain in more muted, less sharp ways.

The collection’s last story is “The Present Tense.” In it, the narrator describes remarrying after her husband’s death. Carefully, she unpacks the complicated emotions of honoring her dead husband’s memory while giving her new love its due. This story seems most closely autobiographical since the second husband’s name is the same as that of Pietrzyk’s own current spouse.