The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

 

"What are you reading?" is the question Will Schwalbe asks his mother, Mary Anne, as they sit in the waiting room of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.  Mary Anne has been diagnosed with a form of advanced pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal.  This is the story of a son and his mother, who start a "book club" that brings them together as her life comes to a close.  Over the next two years, Will and Mary Anne carry on conversations that are both wide-ranging and deeply personal, prompted by an eclectic array of books and a shared passion for reading.  Together they find that reading isn't the opposite of doing; it's the opposite of dying.

 



This book is about so much more than just a list of books that the two of them shared during the time prior to his mother's passing (though there is a list in the back of the book, in case some of their comments inspire you to seek them out).  It is a journey where two people explore the power of books and reading while coming to terms with one of life's most emotional passages--the transition from life to death.  How do we let go? How can we? And yet, we must.

Book Club will be discussing this at our January meeting, and I've made lots of notes about particular passages that held emotional resonance for me.  But because I try to keep things short here, let me list just one of them to give you an idea of the many beautiful passages in this book:

"One of the many things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality.  Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind.  But printed books have body, presence.  Sure, sometimes they'll elude you by hiding in improbable places...But at other times they'll confront you, and you'll literally stumble over some tomes you hadn't thought about in weeks or years.  I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me.  They may make me feel, but I can't feel them.  They are all soul with no flesh, no texture, and no weight.  They can get in your head but can't whack you upside it."

A beautiful book about the relationship between a mother and her son and their bonding over books.  As the book says, “We're all in the end-of-your-life book-club, whether we acknowledge it or not; each book we read may well be the last, each conversation the final one.”