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cpardonme 's review for:
The End of Your Life Book Club
by Will Schwalbe
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.