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thebookboy's review against another edition
5.0
Intimate, harrowing, lyrical, but most, importantly, filled with love. This collection of poetry is Faber's love letter to his dead wife in which he transforms the experience of her slowly dying of incurable cancer and their days filled with fear and sadness into a beautiful and hauntingly real collection of poems that I know will stick with me.
The love Faber had for his wife is absolutely palpable, and he doesn't shy away or overdramatise the harsh realities that suffering from cancer brings to both the patient and their loved ones. There is magic in the mundane here and celebration in the exceptional - totally, sadly, exquisite from start to finish.
The love Faber had for his wife is absolutely palpable, and he doesn't shy away or overdramatise the harsh realities that suffering from cancer brings to both the patient and their loved ones. There is magic in the mundane here and celebration in the exceptional - totally, sadly, exquisite from start to finish.
kebcyx's review against another edition
4.0
Such a beautiful, tender, accessible collection, which I have already turned to multiple times since first reading it. I'd recommend this to anyone, though also suggest keeping a tissue on hand for any (well earned) tears.
sirli's review against another edition
5.0
How touching, honest and full of the undying love to his wife Eva this poetry collection is. Some of the poems were quite intimate and revealed a lot more I would have expected. Poem, that moved me incredibly deeply, was the first one after Eva's death "F.W. Pain Ltd, Bryson House, Horace Road, Kingston"
"...Besides, its over now.
I'm surplus to requirements
You are with others of your kind
and I, at last, am absent from your mind.
There are so many people I should tell
that you have left me.
A challenge for another day.
How warm it is! It has become July.
I look up as I walk, and in the sky
I see the first of all the moons
we will not share."
How you notice usual, ordinary things around you and realize, never can you share these with her/him again. The first time you are going to admit, that this has ended, life will be never the same and the person you loved has gone.
Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one will recognize the pain, the anger, the grief that Michel Faber was going through, opened his soul to share the hard emotions with the reader.
"...Besides, its over now.
I'm surplus to requirements
You are with others of your kind
and I, at last, am absent from your mind.
There are so many people I should tell
that you have left me.
A challenge for another day.
How warm it is! It has become July.
I look up as I walk, and in the sky
I see the first of all the moons
we will not share."
How you notice usual, ordinary things around you and realize, never can you share these with her/him again. The first time you are going to admit, that this has ended, life will be never the same and the person you loved has gone.
Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one will recognize the pain, the anger, the grief that Michel Faber was going through, opened his soul to share the hard emotions with the reader.
paulataua's review against another edition
5.0
Faber’s poems honor the memory of his wife’s six year battle with cancer. The poems are full of pain, anger, grief, but above all love. Maybe it’s because I lost my mother to cancer many years ago that ‘Undying’ resonates with me.
rachelandrews's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.75
alexandra114's review against another edition
emotional
sad
fast-paced
5.0
So well written and heartbreaking! Really great, emotive poems on love and cancer and grief and loss and learning to live after you lose someone.