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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
My sincere thanks to Alfred A. Knopf Publishing and Anne Kingman & Michael Kindness of Books on the Nightstand for the advanced reading copy of this book which will be published October 2012.
There is so much I'd like to tell you about The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe but this is one of those books you need t read yourself and take away what you will.
The title describes what we're about to read aptly as it is Will Schwalbe's story of the bound he and his mother, Mary Ann Schwalbe shared through books and reading during her treatment for pancreatic cancer. From the very first sentence "We were nuts about the mocha in the waiting room at Memorial Sloane Kettering's outpatient care center" to its very last words, this book is a loving tribute to Will's mother and perhaps if not totally healing at least to work through his grief.
The sentence stating that May Ann's cancer is treatable, not curable, lets us know at the start what the end result will be. Somewhere early on, Will admits that he knows the outcome but there will be some time before death comes. He often says what he wants "is Mom not to be dying" and I agree. Mary Ann is a remarkable woman who did remarkable things. She was a hard working member of International Rescue Committee and she often journeyed to Kabul and all over Afghanistan. One of her life's dreams was to see a library built in Kabul.
One touching moment for me was when Will meant to tell his mother "I love you" but instead told her how proud of her he was. This was something I had never thought to tell my own parents. As children and later as an adult, my father and mother often said these words to me. How I wish I had said those same words to them.
There is so much I'd like to tell you about The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe but this is one of those books you need t read yourself and take away what you will.
The title describes what we're about to read aptly as it is Will Schwalbe's story of the bound he and his mother, Mary Ann Schwalbe shared through books and reading during her treatment for pancreatic cancer. From the very first sentence "We were nuts about the mocha in the waiting room at Memorial Sloane Kettering's outpatient care center" to its very last words, this book is a loving tribute to Will's mother and perhaps if not totally healing at least to work through his grief.
The sentence stating that May Ann's cancer is treatable, not curable, lets us know at the start what the end result will be. Somewhere early on, Will admits that he knows the outcome but there will be some time before death comes. He often says what he wants "is Mom not to be dying" and I agree. Mary Ann is a remarkable woman who did remarkable things. She was a hard working member of International Rescue Committee and she often journeyed to Kabul and all over Afghanistan. One of her life's dreams was to see a library built in Kabul.
One touching moment for me was when Will meant to tell his mother "I love you" but instead told her how proud of her he was. This was something I had never thought to tell my own parents. As children and later as an adult, my father and mother often said these words to me. How I wish I had said those same words to them.
Maybe I'm a cold person because I didn't find this book touching, or maybe I have discerning tastes and I can smell when a former publisher called in a favor to a colleague a mile a way. The two members of this book club are Schwalbe and his mother, Mary Ann. Almost from the get-go I felt no bond with these people. Mary Ann was an admissions counselor at Harvard, in addition to holding similar positions at other Ivy League schools in addition to doing all kinds of humanitarian refugee work in all kinds of dangerous places. While Mary Ann did all sorts of good things for refugees; the details of which go on and on for pages, it also wasn't uncommon for her family to just have tubs of caviar at christmas time that her neighbors just dropped off. She talks about buying swanky real-estate on a whim the way I talk about impulse buying cookware at Target. I don't begrudge people their riches and I guess this is really not what put me off the most about her. I think what made her unlikeable to me is that for all the kindnesses she did for strangers abroad, she seemed like a distant person to the closest people in her life. She comes off as humorless, as is conveyed in a retelling by Schwalbe of a Christmas where they gathered around Mary Ann as she read the whole christmas story, and as little kids are prone to do.. they broke out into a giggling fit. Not only was she apparently furious at the time and threatened to revoke Christmas, over THIRTY YEARS LATER when Schwalbe brings it up she is still not the slightest bit amused. And did I mention she is well into the fourth stage of pancreatic cancer at this point?
The whole book alternates between recollections like the above and moments where Schwalbe just elevates his mother so high on a pedestal. Freely interspersed between all this is the wisdom of someone dying of terminal cancer ( SPOILER ALERT: Did you know you should savor every moment? Did you know you should live every day like it's your last? Did you know that you just don't know what's around the corner?) Wow, I guess the cat is out of the bag.
As far as the book aspect goes, I feel like it was added in throughout as an afterthought. Usually after Mary Ann dispenses some Hallmark, dying person wisdom. LIke "live every day like you last.. Just like in 'Crossing to Safety' !". Also, most of the books they read together are ones I strongly dislike or haven't read.
I would be lying if I said I didn't tear up a bit at the end- but the topic of one's beloved mother dying a slow death is sad no matter how awkwardly it's written and I couldn't help but think of my own mother, also a book lover, and feel a surge of love and an urgency to spend more time with her. This was about the only thing that made this book worth reading when all is said and done.
The whole book alternates between recollections like the above and moments where Schwalbe just elevates his mother so high on a pedestal. Freely interspersed between all this is the wisdom of someone dying of terminal cancer ( SPOILER ALERT: Did you know you should savor every moment? Did you know you should live every day like it's your last? Did you know that you just don't know what's around the corner?) Wow, I guess the cat is out of the bag.
As far as the book aspect goes, I feel like it was added in throughout as an afterthought. Usually after Mary Ann dispenses some Hallmark, dying person wisdom. LIke "live every day like you last.. Just like in 'Crossing to Safety' !". Also, most of the books they read together are ones I strongly dislike or haven't read.
I would be lying if I said I didn't tear up a bit at the end- but the topic of one's beloved mother dying a slow death is sad no matter how awkwardly it's written and I couldn't help but think of my own mother, also a book lover, and feel a surge of love and an urgency to spend more time with her. This was about the only thing that made this book worth reading when all is said and done.
What a great celebration of a life, a mother/son relationship, and the joy of reading books. Is it a book that will be 5 stars for everyone? Probably not, but I really felt like I went on the journey with them and that I would have really liked his mom. Plus I was suprised at how few of the books they read I have ever even heard of, and I thought I was a big reader!
I don't often give books 2 stars, and I feel pretty heartless doing it for this one. But it deserves it. It maybe deserves 1, but I got some ideas for books to read, so fine. 2 stars. What are the problems with this book? Geez, where do I start? For having been an editor and...writer (?!) Will Schwalbe was desperately in need of somebody to teach him how to write. I am not exaggerating when I say that I could have written this book -- and I really don't say that kind of thing lightly. It was clunky and chunky and had WAY too many commas, parentheses, and sentences that went on for a full paragraph. I was SO bored that I skimmed through a good portion of it, and I only finished it because I was reading it for my book club. I kept wishing that I was reading a good memoir-type book like The Glass Castle, or Little Heathens, or Toast by Nigel Slater, or...well, anything, really. There are SO MANY other beautifully written memoirs that I was kind of annoyed I spent a week reading this one. Oh well, whatever, at least I have some books for my to-read list.
Will Schwalbe's The End of Your Life Book Club is one of the most satisfying books I have read in a long time. He writes of the time he spent with his mom as she is trying to live as she is dying from pancreatic cancer. He wrote of this experience through the lens of the books they read or talked about together at the end of her life. I felt in each chapter as if I was sitting listening to the conversations right along with them, which made me eager to pick the book up once I had started reading it. Schwalbe said in an interview that he is on a crusade of sorts to convince people that conversations around books help people talk about what matters to them when they don't want to talk about themselves. This book convinced me of how true that is, if only we have the time.
In this book Schwalbe writes, "All readers have reading in common." For those of you who love books and can describe exactly how a particular title meant something in their lives, then this book will resonate with you. The book is only a little about cancer and death, and a lot about living well and the power of the written word.
I think I would have enjoyed this more if it hadn't hit so close to home. While my mom did not have cancer, she did have many appointments in the months leading up to her death. I wish I had handled that time more like Schwalbe, but to paraphrase his mother, we do the best we can.
This wasn't my favorite book by any means but I liked the relationship between the mother and son. I think that the life that the mom lived in the book was an honorable one and it made the son look at his to see what he could do better, which is important. I liked that they discussed the books together and that they were able to disagree or get different things from the same book. I love when books mention having conversations about reading and also include titles of other books that affected them in some way. Those two reasons are why I liked this book.
I received an ARC of this from BookBrowse.com as it is one of their online book club selections. This story of a mother-son book club which takes place during her treatment for pancreatic cancer touched me deeply. Many of my interactions with friends and family revolve around "What are you reading?" and Schwalbe's book describes those discoveries perfectly. The other aspect of this book which I enjoyed is how mother and son where able to discuss all sorts of topics and themes which were important to them utilizing books and characters to make their points. Great literature speaks to us through universal themes and Schwalbe and his mom read their share of great literature. They also read some books which are not considered "great" but contained themes and discussion points relevant to their lives. On a very practical note, when describing the hours leading up to his mom's death, I felt the author captured that time perfectly: the boredom, the sadness, the relief of it being over and the grief of the person being gone. While this was a sad story as Stage 4 pancreatic cancer is ultimately fatal, I was not left saddened, but uplifted.
Loved the idea of this book but wasn't wild about the execution. Seemed as if the author didn't know what the book was supposed to be: a memoir of his mother, a story about their book club or a story of refugees, charity and why we need to care about the rest of the world. As a result, I thought it lacked focus.