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A review by isabelsdigest
Only About Love by Debbi Voisey
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.0
ARC received in exchange for an Honest Review
Thank you to Fairlightbooks and NetGalley!
“Watching him die will be a privilege. Loving someone means you don’t want them to be alone right at the end. It means no matter how scary it is, or how much it hurts, NOT being there would be so much worse. He witnessed her first breath. She’ll stay until he takes his last”
This is a book I was afraid to read, so please check the trigger warnings as it deals with the death of a parent.
With beautiful poetic snapshots, Debbi Voisey, delivers a joyful and sob-inducing novella focusing on the life of Frank, his wife, his parents, his children, his mistakes, his dreams, and his slow decay due to Alzheimer.
I wasn’t expecting this book to touch so many sensible parts of my being, but like Frank, one of my biggest fears is Alzheimer's as it consumed my strong-spirited grandmother. It also addresses my second biggest fear that is the death of my parents. Only About Love does such a marvelous job at depicting the process of idolizing a parent only to discover that, they too are just human, and have to reconcile those versions you created in your head about them and their flaws into a complex bond that exists out of love.
It is all about love, and as much as I wanted to villainize Frank and tell him how much he deserved to rot sick and alone for putting his family in such misery, I still had pity for him. Voisey speaks from a place of love and some of the aspects that I appreciated the most while reading were:
-The apparently disconnected snapshots and the ‘ah-ha!’ moment when I realized they were all about the same characters from different points of view and different moments in their lives. It feels fresh and intimate, yet the space in between makes us always wonder what lurked in those spaces we don’t get to read.
-The first-person narrative in some of those snapshots pulls you in until you have some in the third person, pushing you away. This game of being in with the secret and then being another viewer fits right in with the structure and the pace.
-The characters, all human, all flawed, all love. Yes, Frank is the sun and all the others revolve around him, which leaves me wanting more of Liz and what her experience was. Or about John and Dawn, the children, as we learned that Frank was marked by his father and that in a certain way that affects how he acts. I want to know how Frank’s influence reflected on John and Dawn as they grew up and formed their own families.
-Lastly, the depiction of Alzheimer’s disease. Such a terrible all-consuming parasite eating away everything you loved from the people who once shined for their personalities and wits. This is the best depiction I have seen as it covers the family’s point of view but also Frank’s as he is confused and betrayed by his own head. A truly hard topic to write about, so Debbi Voisey did a wonderful job at this so memorable book.
Short but powerful, honest, and experimental, Only About Love is a book you must add to your list.
Keep reading, and when you are not You can find me as @isabelsdigest everywhere
#onlyaboutlove #fairlightmoderns @fairlightbooks
Thank you to Fairlightbooks and NetGalley!
“Watching him die will be a privilege. Loving someone means you don’t want them to be alone right at the end. It means no matter how scary it is, or how much it hurts, NOT being there would be so much worse. He witnessed her first breath. She’ll stay until he takes his last”
This is a book I was afraid to read, so please check the trigger warnings as it deals with the death of a parent.
With beautiful poetic snapshots, Debbi Voisey, delivers a joyful and sob-inducing novella focusing on the life of Frank, his wife, his parents, his children, his mistakes, his dreams, and his slow decay due to Alzheimer.
I wasn’t expecting this book to touch so many sensible parts of my being, but like Frank, one of my biggest fears is Alzheimer's as it consumed my strong-spirited grandmother. It also addresses my second biggest fear that is the death of my parents. Only About Love does such a marvelous job at depicting the process of idolizing a parent only to discover that, they too are just human, and have to reconcile those versions you created in your head about them and their flaws into a complex bond that exists out of love.
It is all about love, and as much as I wanted to villainize Frank and tell him how much he deserved to rot sick and alone for putting his family in such misery, I still had pity for him. Voisey speaks from a place of love and some of the aspects that I appreciated the most while reading were:
-The apparently disconnected snapshots and the ‘ah-ha!’ moment when I realized they were all about the same characters from different points of view and different moments in their lives. It feels fresh and intimate, yet the space in between makes us always wonder what lurked in those spaces we don’t get to read.
-The first-person narrative in some of those snapshots pulls you in until you have some in the third person, pushing you away. This game of being in with the secret and then being another viewer fits right in with the structure and the pace.
-The characters, all human, all flawed, all love. Yes, Frank is the sun and all the others revolve around him, which leaves me wanting more of Liz and what her experience was. Or about John and Dawn, the children, as we learned that Frank was marked by his father and that in a certain way that affects how he acts. I want to know how Frank’s influence reflected on John and Dawn as they grew up and formed their own families.
-Lastly, the depiction of Alzheimer’s disease. Such a terrible all-consuming parasite eating away everything you loved from the people who once shined for their personalities and wits. This is the best depiction I have seen as it covers the family’s point of view but also Frank’s as he is confused and betrayed by his own head. A truly hard topic to write about, so Debbi Voisey did a wonderful job at this so memorable book.
Short but powerful, honest, and experimental, Only About Love is a book you must add to your list.
Keep reading, and when you are not You can find me as @isabelsdigest everywhere
#onlyaboutlove #fairlightmoderns @fairlightbooks
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Dementia, Infidelity, and Terminal illness