The Mercy Papers - Robin Romm (2009)I wanted to say this was a very personal memoir, but aren't all biographers a picture of the person anyway? Robins mom Jackie was a prominent lawyer who had been diagnosed 9 years earlier with stage IV breast cancer. Robin takes us on a journey of her last three weeks with her mother and as she explains at the end of her book, that there were lots of books around about healing after a death in the family, but very few that dealt with the death itself.
Certainly graphic in the grimness of such an awful cancer death, with her mother at only 53 and Robin in her 20s, I was certainly struck by her experience. Each person is left to deal with the situation alone, and to find their own way, but I began to get annoyed with her inability to accept her mom was dying and to let her mother have some peace and comfort.
My own belief is that in the past 50 years, with the great advances in medicine most people don't actually believe that they could die, and we spend so much time and money trying to avoid it, that we don't sit and have conversations about it. We avoid talking about dying, teaching people and ultimately isolating ourselves.
Robin is an excellent writer, and is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature. Her voice is loud and lyrical and leads you in a merry dance between the three weeks at her parents house, and the stories in her past. 4/5
1 comment:
Your blog has inspired me to have one of my very own! And Liam's hair in Taken? You're right on the money!
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