'Before I say Goodbye' and 'If the Spirit Moves You'

Anyone who has read this blog for longer than a week will know that I adore Daphne by Justine Picardie. I promised to write about her other work, but have put off doing so because I didn't feel that I was up to the task. I've seen so many other bloggers write eloquently that to even attempt to write something seemed likely to be a paltry attempt. I felt I wouldn't be able to do the books justice and I'd just end up writing something trite, which isn't what they deserves at all.

I hope I've overcome those fears now - what I write may not be perfect, but it will be what I feel, which I suppose is the most one can ask for when book blogging.

After reading Daphne, I really wanted to read other things Justine had written, and got If The Spirit Moves You out of the library, and then was lucky enough to find both it and Before I say Goodbye in a secondhand shop.

I decided to read Ruth's account of her fatal illness first, and found I was completely unprepared for the humour I found within her emails. I don't know what I had expected, but a dying woman making jokes certainly wasn't anywhere close. There she is, plotting with a friend who has HIV/Aids, just precisely what the blurb for their posthumously published correspondence should say 'In 1997, two young people [I'm going to be 29 in my obits] went into hiding in South London when their bodies were occupied by invading Bad Cells. This is their moving diary ... Blah blah blah.'
Of course there is a great deal of pain too, both physically and mentally, and it's not just Ruth's pain that shows through the few emails that cover the final ten months of her life - there are numerous emails from friends and family who ask for news, but are always aware of the need to be cheerful, in case the news is too hard to tell. The anger is palpable too.
Into this flurry of emails are placed the five columns that Ruth wrote for the Observer, and the inevitable letters that followed on from these. People whose hearts she had touched who ached to let her know that she wasn't alone.
Strangely, this is where the book caught me, making me put it down for an hour or two, until I was strong enough to go back to it. It's not until you get to the very end of Ruth's journey that it suddenly impresses on you how quickly everything is happening - yet she still has the strength to tell her friends that the end is near. Such courage surely is not in all of us.

Justine wrote the final column in the Observer, and towards the end wrote 'Ruth slipped away to a different place, a place where I could not go with her.' This seemed to be the main theme of Justine's book If the Spirit Moves You written almost three years after the death of Ruth. A diary chronicling the search for her sister in the afterlife which takes her right across the Atlantic and back again. This book cut me to the quick - I have two sisters, both to whom I am incredibly close, and can't even begin to imagine the day when I'm without one of them (which will happen sooner than I want, as they are 12 and 15 years older than me) - I can really understand the journey Justine is compelled to go on. What I admire more than anything is her bravery - not simply for going on this journey that may or may not produce what she is looking for, but also at the fact that she found the strength to write it all down.
Ah! I hear you cry 'but she's a journalist!' .... Well, um, yes she is, but I still think you have to be incredibly brave to bare your heart and soul to the world at large in this way; and there is a fragility to parts of this book that belies that strength - although the final statement is strong: 'I like to think that I'm walking towards Ruth, slowly, steadily, as long as it will take. I know that one day I will reach her.'

I've taken too long trying to figure out the exact strength of these two books, and in the end, I don't think I've really touched on what exactly makes these books special to me. For anyone who has felt loss, or pain, they are books that might just help in the time of sorrow. This isn't why they should be read, however. These are simply two books where the power of the written word forces the reader to confront those facts of life that might otherwise be ignored, and may just make the reader stronger in the process.

That's what they did to me.

Through the emotional wringer

It is not often that I make it through a book in twenty four hours. Agatha Christie, yes - that's easy. And Harry Potter 6 I read in nine hours, having bought it at midnight and refusing to go to bed until I found out who died. But, like I say, it's not normal practise, especially when it's a work day.

So to say that The Spare Room by Helen Garner held me captive and refused to let me go, even when my heart was being ripped out, would not be doing justice to this small and beautifully formed novel. Other blogs, of a more exalted quality than this one, have praised this novel, and I can do nothing but say with sincerity that I concur.

Hilary Mantel describes it as 'a book for grown-up people', and this is true; but there's a brutality to it that makes it as hard for a grown-up to read as for an adolescent. It's beautifully constructed - so simple in it's premise of caring for a friend with cancer - but beneath the almost trivial exterior lies a painful place of warring emotions where the need to pretend all is well clashes with the equally powerful need to tell the truth - and that, for me, is the most brutal part of the book. When Helen rips through the veil of breezy cheerfulness that Nicola exudes whilst crippled with pain, knocks the breath from the body, but it doesn't stop us from urging her to continue.

Susan Hill wrote on her blog that 'THIS WILL WIN THE BOOKER PRIZE' (Caps are Susan's own) ... as we all know by now, it didn't even make the longlist, and my disappointment was based purely on the thoughts of those bloggers who I respect most. Now I've read it myself, I am glad that I put it on my anti-booker list. This is a book with lots to say and it says it whilst trying to come to terms with the most demanding of patients, suffering from a most demanding disease.

Read it, that's all I have to say!