Phoebe Stone, an English professor from St. Louis, wants to kill herself at a lovely oceanfront hotel in Rhode Island. However, upon arrival, she encounters a hotel full of people ready for a six-day vacation wedding. Like most suicidal people, Phoebe tells someone about her agony – the bride-to-be. They end up engaging in honest conversation, and the bride-to-be begs Phoebe not to ruin her wedding week. Phoebe ends up not killing herself and gets…
Some people adore books that leave them with a warm feeling, but I adore books that leave me with tears streaming on my face. This book is one of the latter. Originally a bestseller in Sweden, it’s now translated into English (and other languages) for the world to contemplate. In the story, Bo is facing aging as his own body is breaking down. His wife is in long-term care with dementia, unable to recognize even…
“What am I going to do without him?”…“Write about him Paul… That’s what you have to do.” In a world before triple-drug therapy (HAART) was enacted and allowed individuals to live a normal lifespan with HIV, Monette and his lover Roger Horwitz contracted HIV, which ineluctably progressed into AIDS. Professionally, Horwitz was a lawyer and a lover of literature; Monette was a writer. Both were educated at Ivy League schools. This work is the first…
Albert Camus was a towering intellectual figure during and after the Second World War in France. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature and tried to stand for truth in an era of ideology. However, on January 4, 1960, he tragically died in his prime in a car wreck while traveling back to Paris. This book tries to make sense of this tragedy, approximately fifty years after. Catelli excels at setting up the circumstantial case…
Throughout recorded time, humans have wondered about the afterlife and its relationship to this life. Tolstoy takes a spin on that and focuses on the interface between the two. What exactly happens as one approaches death? Few have experienced near-death, but no one has experienced death fully. What is dying like? Tolstoy provides his answer in this short depiction of a Russian lawyer Ivan Ilych. He lives a normal, even boring, life and suddenly gets…