The Sum of Trifles - (Crux: The Georgia Literary Nonfiction) by Julia Ridley Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

"This first book by Julia Ridley Smith explores the death of the author's parents through the objects they left behind, offering both a poignant meditation on grief and a curious, thoughtful look at the ways that we live in a material culture, where everything from a work of art to a prosthetic leg contains a multitude of meanings. One piece uses her father's hi-fi as a way of talking about jazz, race, and the life of the artist, while another (previously published in the New England Review) zooms in on an antique mourning miniature to tell the story of her mother's final days. The book combines family lore, memories of growing up in the home of two antiques dealers, and an assessment of the narrator's literary and cultural influences as a white woman growing up in the late-twentieth century South. Organized as a series of essays exploring the things her parents left behind, The Sum of Trifles traces Smith's experience of loss as her elderly parents' health declines and they die, leaving the narrator and her family with the task of sorting, donating, and finally selling the contents of their home"--

Book Synopsis

When Julia Ridley Smith's parents died, they left behind a virtual museum of furniture, books, art, and artifacts. Between the contents of their home, the stock from their North Carolina antiques shop, and the ephemera of two lives lived, Smith faced a monumental task. What would she do with her parents' possessions?

Smith's wise and moving memoir in essays, The Sum of Trifles, peels back the layers of meaning surrounding specific objects her parents owned, from an eighteenth-century miniature to her father's prosthetics. A vintage hi-fi provides a view of her often tense relationship with her father, whose love of jazz kindled her own artistic impulse. A Japanese screen embodies her mother's principles of good taste and good manners, while an antebellum quilt prompts Smith to grapple with her family's slaveholding legacy. Along the way, she turns to literature that illuminates how her inheritance shaped her notions of identity and purpose.

The Sum of Trifles offers up dark humor and raw feeling, mixed with an erudite streak. It's a curious, thoughtful look at how we live in and with our material culture and how we face our losses as we decide what to keep and what to let go.

Review Quotes

Smith's sharp and well-timed humor offers the reader something more than just a chance to take a breath. It reminds us of how human, how redemptive, a laugh can be, even --or especially--at the hardest times.--Molly Sentell Haile "North Carolina Literary Review"

This book is about loving even when loving is hard, and about letting go. As Smith works through her grief, she comes to understand that a tag sale can be its own kind of memorial service, and that her parents will live on in stories. In beautiful writing that doesn't hide from hard truths, Smith brings us a clear-eyed view of her family, herself, and the Southern culture that shaped them all.--Mary Lambeth Moore "Our State"

'In gilding the rifts, you ascribe beauty to the brokenness, inviting anyone to see how, treated tenderly, it can shine.' Julia Ridley Smith is referring here to an object in need of mending, but the sentence describes everything that is true and raw and generous and emotionally satisfying about this book. Smith's knowledge that loss can only be understood through form makes this the best book I have ever read about grief. It helps a lot that I did not read one page without intelligence and humor, and more often than not, both at once.--Michael Parker "author of Prairie Fever"

I love reading about rules, and I also love reading about stuff, so of course I loved Julia Ridley Smith's moving, witty, beautifully written look at what it means to reckon with the trifles and treasures left behind by her parents, former antique store owners and perennial, opinionated collectors. This book is a pleasure to read from beginning to end, and Smith's keen observations and insight provide a great opportunity for conversation: how women navigate family responsibilities in that 'sandwich generation' time of life when they have both children (those magpies) and elderly parents needing care; how Americans care for our elderly people; how white Southerners can reckon with their ancestry; and what it means to grieve and remember people through the things they have left behind.--Belle Boggs "author of The Art of Waiting"

Julia Ridley Smith's Sum of Trifles is a beautifully crafted, elegiac journey. These essays--memories and mysteries of the author's eccentric parents and their eclectic collections, as well as moving meditations on writing, marriage, and motherhood--are rich and compelling. A wonderful exploration of grief and the joy left behind.--Jill McCorkle "author of Hieroglyphics"

Recommended for anyone who has lost a parent, for lovers and wranglers of ephemera, for amateur epistemologists, and for incorrigible musers.--Kelly K. Ferguson "Indyweek"

Smith is a sensitive and nuanced storyteller, so that the very intimate curiosities of her family's life become a bridge for understanding grief more generally. . . . Her careful treatment of things inherited--both tangible and internal--is a sympathetic ode to the vibrant stories that live on, even when the people who lived in them have gone.--Michelle Anne Schingler "Foreword Reviews"

About the Author

JULIA RIDLEY SMITH is the 2021-22 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has also taught creative writing and literature at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Ecotone, Electric Literature, the New England Review, and the Southern Review, among other publications. She lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.