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A review by prolixity
We Know How This Ends: Living While Dying by Bruce H. Kramer, Cathy Wurzer
Did not finish book.
"I don't know how much longer I will live. I know that I am dying. But this is not new knowledge, and it is not ALS. It has always been so. Disease only changes the circumstance and the speed, but the knowledge remains as it was."
Well.
I keep running into books that I dislike but that make me feel like a shitty, heartless person for disliking them. Like this one.
I thought that this would be an insightful memoir into how an incurable disease and the knowledge of impending death affects one man's life. And, in some parts, it is:
"All of us need to find the holy balance between the fixable and the inevitable."
"The ALS person I have become is so easy to disrupt, so easy to push off balance, so easy to move into painful and difficult spaces, that I hardly recognize him. Yet I know it is me."
But the rest of the time, it's filled with sappy, confusing, overwrought sentences like these:
"But for me, the demarcation between old normal and new normal is so complete and specific, so compelling, that I realized that to try to bring the old religious symbols of fixing with me into this new, ALS-defined space would only exacerbate the demise of the person I knew that I had to become."
"The damnedest things things suddenly become very clear- past pain, human frailty, regrets, joys, and visions, such visions of color and sound and wholeness beyond physical limitation."
And there are much more of the latter type of sentences than the former, I'm afraid.
Once I got more than a third of the way through and the book continued to be painful to read, I realised that I just couldn't make myself do it any longer, no matter how much I wanted to like this book. Once Bruce started talking about disease versus dis ease (which I'm still very confused about) I had already mentally checked out.
And yet...
I still feel like a terrible person. Because of course I empathise with Bruce- he's been through circumstances so compromising, so tough, so painful, so unfair- and he's reacted admirably. He seems like a down-to-earth, genuine guy who's doing the very best with what he's got and trying to learn everything he can from his disease and diagnosis. And I think that this memoir could have been really good- it was just not written well at all.
I had this same problem with [b:Night|1617|Night (The Night Trilogy, #1)|Elie Wiesel|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1391969340s/1617.jpg|265616]. I didn't like it, and it was a memoir written by someone who had experienced terrible tragedy. How could I criticise a book written by a Holocaust survivor? But I did. Because in both that case and the case with Living While Dying, it isn't the story or the author that I dislike: it's the writing.
So, I don't know. Maybe other people will read this and love it. I found it agonising. Maybe I have a shrivelled, blackened heart. Maybe I am a cold, soulless, she-demon who has set out to terrorise memoir authors. All I'm saying is this: it's wonderful to try to get your story out there, especially when it's powerful and should be told, like one about disability or genocide or death or persecution. But you have to acknowledge that memoirs are still books, and no matter how admirable the story, poor writing can't be swept under the rug.
P.S. I forgot to mention that I was given an ARC of this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Rest assured, I will never let this sway any of my opinions. You can't buy my approval with a free galley- you need chocolate for that. Chocolate and money.
P.P.S. I feel like I should include some links regarding this subject matter, because even if I didn't like the book, I agree with the message. Here is a link to the blog that Bruce has kept since his diagnosis, upon which this book is based. And here is a link to a fact page about ALS, and I highly encourage you to visit alsa.org is you want to know more about the disease or get involved with their organisation.
Well.
I keep running into books that I dislike but that make me feel like a shitty, heartless person for disliking them. Like this one.
I thought that this would be an insightful memoir into how an incurable disease and the knowledge of impending death affects one man's life. And, in some parts, it is:
"All of us need to find the holy balance between the fixable and the inevitable."
"The ALS person I have become is so easy to disrupt, so easy to push off balance, so easy to move into painful and difficult spaces, that I hardly recognize him. Yet I know it is me."
But the rest of the time, it's filled with sappy, confusing, overwrought sentences like these:
"But for me, the demarcation between old normal and new normal is so complete and specific, so compelling, that I realized that to try to bring the old religious symbols of fixing with me into this new, ALS-defined space would only exacerbate the demise of the person I knew that I had to become."
"The damnedest things things suddenly become very clear- past pain, human frailty, regrets, joys, and visions, such visions of color and sound and wholeness beyond physical limitation."
And there are much more of the latter type of sentences than the former, I'm afraid.
Once I got more than a third of the way through and the book continued to be painful to read, I realised that I just couldn't make myself do it any longer, no matter how much I wanted to like this book. Once Bruce started talking about disease versus dis ease (which I'm still very confused about) I had already mentally checked out.
And yet...
I still feel like a terrible person. Because of course I empathise with Bruce- he's been through circumstances so compromising, so tough, so painful, so unfair- and he's reacted admirably. He seems like a down-to-earth, genuine guy who's doing the very best with what he's got and trying to learn everything he can from his disease and diagnosis. And I think that this memoir could have been really good- it was just not written well at all.
I had this same problem with [b:Night|1617|Night (The Night Trilogy, #1)|Elie Wiesel|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1391969340s/1617.jpg|265616]. I didn't like it, and it was a memoir written by someone who had experienced terrible tragedy. How could I criticise a book written by a Holocaust survivor? But I did. Because in both that case and the case with Living While Dying, it isn't the story or the author that I dislike: it's the writing.
So, I don't know. Maybe other people will read this and love it. I found it agonising. Maybe I have a shrivelled, blackened heart. Maybe I am a cold, soulless, she-demon who has set out to terrorise memoir authors. All I'm saying is this: it's wonderful to try to get your story out there, especially when it's powerful and should be told, like one about disability or genocide or death or persecution. But you have to acknowledge that memoirs are still books, and no matter how admirable the story, poor writing can't be swept under the rug.
P.S. I forgot to mention that I was given an ARC of this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Rest assured, I will never let this sway any of my opinions. You can't buy my approval with a free galley- you need chocolate for that. Chocolate and money.
P.P.S. I feel like I should include some links regarding this subject matter, because even if I didn't like the book, I agree with the message. Here is a link to the blog that Bruce has kept since his diagnosis, upon which this book is based. And here is a link to a fact page about ALS, and I highly encourage you to visit alsa.org is you want to know more about the disease or get involved with their organisation.