A review by chalambra
The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

4.0

These folks live in a world quite different from my own, filled with many privileges. Usually that distances me from any relationship with book "characters." I didn't feel that -- Mary Ann(e) had a remarkably generous and kind view of the world. There was a part of her that remained inaccessible and that was appealing too. She was stoic not to be stoic but rather to focus on what was of concern and interest to her. The son did a nice job of using the stories of their readings to augment his mother's story as he knew it and her story was indeed rich and deep. I also appreciated that you didn't have to know each book to grasp either it's relationship to the story or the feelings it invoked for these people. The writing was proficient but not elegant - it stayed out of the way in a sense, which is a good thing, but there was never a turn of a phrase that captured you. Overall, it was a good story that pulled me in, carried me along, and gave me some insights and things to think about, much like the books' roles in the story itself.