The End of Your Life Book Club
Will Schwalbe
Here are a few things you should know about me as you read this review.
1-My Mom and I love to read!
2-My Mom has cancer.
This book was shared with me by a friend who first asked how my Mom is doing as this isn’t a book you recommend to most people who are actively grieving (anticipatory or otherwise). When she heard that my Mom was doing well through her treatments, she encouraged me to read this book.
This is the story of a mother and son making good use of their time waiting in doctor’s offices by discussing books they have read. Their book club is how they share their stories with each other and how they support each other. This is a story of grief, family, hope, kindness, and faith.
From the title and the beginning of the book, the readers know Mary Anne (the mother) is going to die. Even knowing that in advance did not diminish the tears I cried at the end of the book. Each chapter features a book (or books) they read together. This book increased my “to read” list as they shared snippets from books always enough to intrigue the reader and not enough to give it all away.
I recommend this book for anyone who loves to read and loves discussing books with others. This book is great for people who want a glimpse into how others cope with death, dying, and grief. And you should read this book if you enjoy smart, funny, and sad books.
“No one in the family has ever really gotten over Bob’s death. We talk of him daily, recounting stories and imagining what his reactions would be to new books and recent events. He remains for my family the perfect model of how you can be gone but ever present in the lives of people who loved you, in the same way that your favorite books stay with you for your entire life. When I talked with Mom about Bob, I wondered if I would be able to talk about her the same way when she was no longer here” (57).
“Were you sad to leave Cambridge?” I asked her.
She was, she said. Very sad. But she was also looking forward to being back in New York. “The world is very complicated,” she added. “You don’t have to have one emotion at a time” (88).
“I realized then that for all of us, part of the process of Mom’s dying was mourning not just her death but also the death of our dreams of things to come. You don’t really lose the person who has been; you have all those memories” (128).
“I was learning that when you’re with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time” (130).
“And then something occurred to me. “You know the thing about our book club is that we’ve really been in it all our lives.
Mom agreed but pointed out that she’d been doing the same thing with others too–talking about books with my sister and brother and some of her friends. “I guess we’re all in it together,” she said. And I couldn’t help but smile at the other meaning of the phrase. We’re all in the end-of-our-life book club, whether we acknowledge it or not; each book we read may well be the last, each conversation the final one” (281).