Coda Simon Gray,
Publisher: Granta UK
ISBN: 1847081002
DDC: 822.914
Edition: Paperback; 2008-06-01
Summary:
From heartbreaking reflections on his own mortality to
characteristically outrageous asides—"everybody knows somebody who
knows somebody who was given six months to live, and here they are,
only just dead, eight years later or, in exceptional cases, here they
still are, eating oysters and boring the shit out of people"—Gray's
self-proclaimed "last written words on the subject of myself" records
his extraordinary emotional journey. Darkly comic depictions of the
medical team are set against joyful accounts of sunlit days with this
beloved wife, Victoria, in Crete and a beautiful early summer in
Suffolk. Woven into the narrative are arguments with himself,
"Dialogue between a Thicko and a Sicko," a shameful childhood memory,
and a masterfully tense "distraction," written in real time while
waiting for his final prognosis—and smoking one last cigarette.
Written with exceptional candor and a poignant reluctance to leave
this world behind, Coda is painful and beautiful.
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