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A review by wrenreads2025
The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe
5.0
I like to read books about books. Also, as a gerontologist, I like to read books about older adults engaged in a variety of life tasks, including the act of dying. This book includes both of these interests, and like a mixture of coffee and hot chocolate, the results are a delicious mocha that is better than the sum of its parts.
Schwalbe does a great job depicting the complexities that result when two people discuss a book. There are those moments of joy when you both love the same passage. Then there are those opportunities for greater understanding of the book and of each other when you have diverging responses. Obviously, Schwalbe has known his mother his whole life. However, he continues to learn things about her through their discussion of dozens of books they read together during the last two years of her life--as she is undergoing treatments and then hospice for her metastatic pancreatic cancer.
Of course, the book is also about the two people in the book club. I found Will and his mother Mary Anne to be interesting people. I will confess that when I read memoir about age-related illnesses, I often skim the biographical details of the person who is ill and then read more slowly the passages about the illness and how people cope with that. However, with this book, Schwalbe does an excellent job making the books and the biography interconnected so seemlessly, that I remained engaged through the entirety of the book.
One of my favorite chapters is called "The Painted Veil" and is organized around Mary Anne's response to Maugham's novel of the same name. There is a character in that novel who ends up developing courage she did not believe she could muster. Mary Anne remarks that many try to call her courageous for battling pancreatic cancer. She rejects this label and counter argues with many examples of people she sees as truly courageous, primarily the refugees she knows from her work as an advocate for them. I cried as I read her examples, not just because they really did demonstrate incredible bravery in impossible situations. I cried also because Mary Anne's love for them is so apparent and her passion for their welfare was still strong even as she had her own challenges.
All throughout the book, you will find Will and Mary Anne discussing books and their own lives in ways that are intense, intimate and interesting. It's a glorious tribute to his mother, a wonderful depiction of the bond between parent and child, and an enthusiastic celebration of the power of the written word.
Schwalbe does a great job depicting the complexities that result when two people discuss a book. There are those moments of joy when you both love the same passage. Then there are those opportunities for greater understanding of the book and of each other when you have diverging responses. Obviously, Schwalbe has known his mother his whole life. However, he continues to learn things about her through their discussion of dozens of books they read together during the last two years of her life--as she is undergoing treatments and then hospice for her metastatic pancreatic cancer.
Of course, the book is also about the two people in the book club. I found Will and his mother Mary Anne to be interesting people. I will confess that when I read memoir about age-related illnesses, I often skim the biographical details of the person who is ill and then read more slowly the passages about the illness and how people cope with that. However, with this book, Schwalbe does an excellent job making the books and the biography interconnected so seemlessly, that I remained engaged through the entirety of the book.
One of my favorite chapters is called "The Painted Veil" and is organized around Mary Anne's response to Maugham's novel of the same name. There is a character in that novel who ends up developing courage she did not believe she could muster. Mary Anne remarks that many try to call her courageous for battling pancreatic cancer. She rejects this label and counter argues with many examples of people she sees as truly courageous, primarily the refugees she knows from her work as an advocate for them. I cried as I read her examples, not just because they really did demonstrate incredible bravery in impossible situations. I cried also because Mary Anne's love for them is so apparent and her passion for their welfare was still strong even as she had her own challenges.
All throughout the book, you will find Will and Mary Anne discussing books and their own lives in ways that are intense, intimate and interesting. It's a glorious tribute to his mother, a wonderful depiction of the bond between parent and child, and an enthusiastic celebration of the power of the written word.