When Kristin Keane lost her mother, she was devastated by the thought of never spending time with her again. She found herself turning to narratives about alternate universes and time travel—everything from quantum physics to Quantum Leap—in search of ways to reconnect, to bring back what was lost, to conjure up a world in which her mother still existed.

This formally inventive memoir, written in the style of an encyclopedia, is the author’s attempt to both remember her mother and map her own grief. Keane puts thinkers like Einstein and Barthes in conversation with pop culture touchstones like Interstellar and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to explore what it means to lose someone, and what remains of a person—and your relationship with them—after they’re gone.