NUMBER: 88

Genre: Non-fiction; Origin: France; Pages: 100

Satisfaction rating: 1.0

OVERVIEW:

Simone de Beauvoir records the final days of her mother’s losing battle with cancer, the clinical humiliations of a proud woman and the unforeseen flashes of love and hostility at the bedside.

MATTHEW’S COMMENTS:

Okay, so my ranking of 1.0 indicates that I really hated this book. Unfortunately I fear that I may have got off on the wrong foot with de Beauvoir. I found this book impenetrable – a dry account which resembles more a diary than a story. Maybe this is my problem with the book, it doesn’t explore the themes of dying as much as it records in detail the treatment of her mother and the bedside vigil of Simone and her sister. It reads as a very personal account, and as such I suspect it was very cathartic process for the sisters, however, for the general reader you a left scratching your head as to what journey de Beauvoir was attempting to take you on.

Those who have engaged with the other personal accounts of de Beauvoir’s life through her earlier novels may relish this update, but again I have to confess this was the first thing I’ve read and given the coolness in writing I’m not sure I’ll return. At the end of the day I was searching of something similar to Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a book just as short, that deals with the complexities of death, and our uncertainty of what is to come and what we’ve left behind. I was sadly disappointed in this case.

FURTHER REFERENCES:

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Last Modified :July 31st, 2008 Filed under : The Log: novellas Navigate : Previous post / Next post