CBR Passport – 4, new to me author; 3 – different genre – this was a mix between fiction and, given the amount that is drawn from the author’s real life, a sort of memoir
I’ll start this review with a content warning – Catherine Newman’s popular novel, her only novel to date as she mostly writes non-fiction essays and children’s books, is about the death of her childhood friend. Edi, based on Newman’s real friend Ali, is dying of cancer. I know that many of us in this community have had the supremely shitty experience of watching someone we love die from cancer, often far too young. I thought this book was really beautiful and heartfelt, but it REALLY captures the experience of attending to someone you love as they die – please be sure that your heart is ready for that before opening this book.
Edi and Ash (the stand in for Catherine Newman and our protagonist throughout the novel) have been best friends since childhood – they are as close as sisters, the witnesses to one another’s lives. Edi has cancer, and there’s nothing more than can do for her but to help her die – and Ash is there to help her friend through the the worst part of their lives. Edi is moved into hospice (in a bit of “novel magic”, Newman imagines that Ash and Jude (Edi’s husband) determine that Edi should spend the end of her life at a hospice closer to Ash, a change from Newman’s real life situation that allowed a sort of wish-fulfilment of allowing the best friends to be even closer together before her passing). The novel is mostly about how Ash falls apart and is patched back together by the love of everyone in her life.
Ash is a lovable mess. She has two daughters, one in college and the other in those later high school years where the child is essentially an adult in training (and in this novel, Belle is just FULL of delightful one-liners). Despite being divorced, she sees her ex-husband Honey often (he owns a dispensary and frequently makes deliveries of assorted medical chocolates for Edi). Ash is essentially dealing with her grief by sleeping with anything that moves. On paper, were I to write out each of her actions, you might believe that Ash is quite annoying – and yet, if you gave into that belief and wrote Ash off, that might just be a sign that this book isn’t for you. Despite the messiness in Ash’s life, she loves deeply, and it is that love that is the most redemptive quality of the book. It’s almost philosophical, her musings about life and death and what it means that we get to be anything here at all.
You’ve read the first paragraph, so you this book is heartbreaking. It’s a very accurate depiction of hospice and end of life care, bodily functions and all. It’s visceral in its descriptions of how someone goes from being told they’re dying (but really seeming mostly okay) to being actively transitioning to death. There are a lot of parallels drawn between hospice / end of life care, and the birthing process. I strongly believe we need more death doulas in our world. I’ve seen both the sudden death that happens when someone is really sick but no one wants to say just how bad until the very end (this was a very bad way to die, it felt chaotic and cold, somehow both clinical and utterly absent of anything resembling medical care). And I have seen the equally heartbreaking and yet far more peaceful joy of witnessing a loved one’s death through hospice care – and this was so much better, so much more human. I think this book captures why it can be so special, so much better to face such a tender moment as someone’s death with reverence whenever we have the chance.
I thought this book was beautiful and I’m very glad I read it – it’s a 5 star book for me – but I do want to reiterate that you should check in with yourself before reading it – from beginning to end, it is direct and emotional, and very likely to activate personal grief. If you do choose to read it now, I hope you do so while taking care of yourself.