My first book by the author. Shadows of The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and Malte Briggs talking about the big death of the Count. As one grows older, perhaps preoccupations of the mind too change as a carer and one cared for. Life that comes to all of us in its changing form from birth till our last day on Earth. Some things we do, and some are done to us.
The book is intensly written, felt, and perhaps read like a long short story. Spread over a few weeks, the stage being a friend who is dying, and a friend who is caretaker for a while, the agonies of human beings in such close shared contact, where the miseries of terminal illness spread its darkness on the mood.
Yet life persists, people persist, there is sunlight in lived and shared moments, and strange sequences non-linearly bind us together closer, as in sometimes, putting aside the masks of politeness work out better in the non-normal situation where one faces something life-defying. Yet life beams through us, its persistence guiding our beings, our actions, one feels that life affirms itself. This brief candle...is only there while we breathe, so by default or by tautology, life keeps insisting on life, till the last breath. Life and warmth.
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I have with me her stories as well. Read about her recently in the book on reading. In my growing familiarity with Australian authors, she is the latest new one. I do not usually read more contemporary works. I got reminded of Julian Barnes and the Lemon Table, where again the dusk of life casts a different light on the lived life and the color of everyday. Style is such that normally a slow reader like me can pick up and read through in a few hours, dialogue, breathing space, and the intensity and crispness.
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