With the End in Mind

My parents are both still with us, but they are getting frailer and I'm uncomfortably aware that I'm not well prepared for the day when they will leave us. I also have a friend who works in palliative care, and I'm keen to understand more about what she's dealing with. Come to that, I'm not getting any younger myself and it's just as well to start thinking about the pointy end (though I'm not planning to arrive there for a long time yet).

Considering all this, I'm so glad I borrowed Kathryn Mannix's wonderfully calm and matter-of-fact book about death, With the End in Mind. Mannix has worked as a palliative care doctor in the UK for decades and has been present at thousands of deaths. Perhaps the very first chapter is the most comforting, as she talks a terrified patient (and us) through the typical progress of an ordinary death, through growing tiredness and diminishing energy, through periods of sleepiness and brief unconsciousness, to increased unconsciousness and breathing changes, to the very last breath. Most deaths, she emphasises, are peaceful and painless (though of course there are exceptions).

Each chapter is a case study of a patient Mannix has encountered, and the chapters are grouped in themes, beginning with the physical process of dying and moving through psychological questions to the spiritual aspect of the end of life. Death is a subject that we, as a society, are not good at talking about. I recommend With the End in Mind as way of starting that conversation.
 

You Are Here

I'm not sure if David Nicholls visited Australia recently but he was certainly all over the radio spruiking his new novel, You Are Here. As a big fan of One Day, I was primed to enjoy this new one -- a middle-aged romance, both poignant and humorous, set over a long walk across the UK (mind you, a coast-to-coast walk from west to east takes less than a week, so 'long' is a relative term.)

You Are Here centres on WFH copy editor Marnie, settled into hermitude since Covid lockdowns, and geography teacher Michael, licking his wounds after the relatively recent breakup of his marriage. They've both actually been set up with other people by mutual friend Cleo, but they are getting along well and Marnie extends her intended stretch of the walk to spend more time with Michael. But although they both definitely feel a spark, they are both carrying baggage (literally as well as figuratively) and they both make mistakes.

You Are Here is a charming, wry and gentle novel that is honest about the difficulties of falling in love the second time around. Michael and Marnie are delightful company, and there are moments of darkness and pain as well as humour and fun. Realistically, there's no simple epiphany at the end of the trek, in fact it's bloody awkward, but by the end of the novel things are looking hopeful. You Are Here is comforting and refreshing as slipping into a warm bath at the end of a long wet hike.