Judd Foxman learned of his father’s death from his sister Wendy, who delivered the news casually; it was almost appropriate, given Mort’s repression of emotion, a trait held by the family as a whole. After eighteen months treating metastatic cancer, his death was less surprising than Mort’s instruction, despite his long-held atheism, that the family sit shiva for him. Wendy brings her financial big shot husband, Barry, and her three small and boisterous children; older brother Paul brings his wife, Alice, who desperately wants o become pregnant; and wild child baby brother Phillip, after some tension about whether or not he’d make it all, meets his life coach/therapist/fiancée Tracy at the family home after the service. Judd goes alone – he and his wife separated after he found her, on her birthday, in bed with his boss. And, as Judd finalises his packing for the drive to the family home, Jen breaks the news that she’s pregnant to Wade – news especially distressing because their baby died three weeks before the due date.
Like the recently-reviewed Tropper novel How to Talk to a Widower, This is Where I Leave You deals with grief, loss and renewal. In this case, however, there's a wider cast and a broader palette - it's also a masterful study of family dynamics, interpersonal tensions, change, the presence of the past, and love and relationships of all kinds.
As Judd deals with his wife in the present he revisits the evolution of their relationship, from their first meeting on campus to his discovery of her in flagrante on her birthday, and the fallout. The shiva requirement that the family sit together every day for a week forces them to spend more time together than they have since their teens, bringing old allegiances, tensions, guilt and hostility up from the depths. Though markedly different from my own family, so many of the Foxman’s interactions and tensions resonated with me, a fact I suspect lies less with our similarities than with Tropper’s skill. Seen through the filter of Judd's gaze, we view a family that, despite matriarch and celebrity therapist Hillary's (who Mort so often responded "Jesus, Hill," to that Judd thought that was Jesus' full name) best efforts to have total honesty and openness, is full of secrets, chaotic, flawed and real.
The product of an over-sharing mother, many of the scenes featuring Hill struck a chord with me. But then there are so many wonderful lines and vignettes that I imagine readers from wholly different backgrounds would find things with which to relate, too - “You get married to have an ally against your family, and now I’m heading into the trenches alone.”
I've become more aware, since the weddings of my siblings, of the massive differences there are in family cultures, something I was already aware of thanks to the very different dynamics of my maternal and paternal grandparents, but which I see differently encountering them as an adult. So I was struck by the apposite response of Judd and his family to an attempt at interveneing in a fraternal fight:"We all stare at Tracy as if she just started jabbering in ancient tongues. We've always been a family of fighters and spectators. Intervening with reason and consideration demonstrates a dangerous cultural ignorance."
And of the long-winded passage sung by a cantor, his “slow, operatic tenor makes you want to prostrate yourself on the spot and accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior.” I read Tropper's second novel, The Book of Joe, not long after it was published, before beginning this blog. Like This is Where I Leave You it was funny, observant, raw, real, and poignant, though less accomplished. I'd like to revisit it, but I also think that, having read two of his novels in the space of a couple of weeks, I should probably take a break for the time being. - Alex
Joanna Lander is a psychologist investigating near-death experiences, a research field mired in pseudoscience and agenda. Located at Mercy General, her aim is to get to patients who’ve survived dying as quickly as possible, partly to record their experiences as accurately as she can while they’re still fresh, and partly so her data is uncontaminated by her biggest rival at Mercy General, Maurice Mandrake. Author of such erudite tomes as The Light at the End of the Tunnel, Mr Mandrake reshapes survivor’s memories to fit his theory, ruining any subsequent interviews Joanna manages. When she hears about another NDE researcher, Joanna goes to lengths to avoid him – in her experience even the fact he’s an MD is no evidence of sanity.
But Richard Wright is as scientifically based as she is. A neurologist convinced that NDE’s occur for a reason related to survival, he’s created a drug that seems to imitate the NDE experience without endangering the participants – they continuous brain scanning and blood collection while they undergo the induced NDE. His work would allow Joanna access to uncontaminated data from people undergoing repeated, manufactured NDE’s, if only they could get enough appropriate subjects. Instead their ever-shrinking pool includes a socialite to busy to ever undergo the process, a garrulous WW2 veteran more interested in telling tales of his experiences there than post-NDE, a taciturn man who seems to experience nothing when he goes under, and an increasingly skittish college student. Which is why, desperate to discover something before the first round of funding expires, Joanna becomes a subject.
Part of the advantage of having Joanna undergo the process was that she, unlike the other participants, would be able to describe the experience more accurately:
“I’d know if dark meant dark as in Carlsbad Caverns or the hospital parking lot at nine o’clock at night. I’d know if peaceful meant ‘tranquil’ or ‘anesthetized.’ And I’d know what they’re experiencing that they’re not even mentioning because they don’t realize it’s important, and I don’t know how to ask them about it.”
As a qualitative proto-researcher I understand that frustration, of your participants unable to usefully describe or articulate the elements of their experience or practice that you want to explore, and the difficulty of neither leading them nor letting them leave without saying something. So Joanna is all the more frustrated by her inability to capture many of the elements of her own experience, which Richard takes as support for his position that the NDE is a temporal lobe event – the temporal lobe has no connection with the brain’s language centre, and thus no way of articulating. But for Joanna, whose NDE’s built to a fuller, but metaphorical, experience, this focus distracts from her attempts to identify a familiarity she’s certain she has but can’t quite recall.
Her frustration about these teasing almost connections is extremely effectively portrayed – every time she was close to consciously realising what something meant she was interrupted and the fleeting proto-thought vanished again. This aspect was combined with an element that frequently recurs is Willis’s work: as in The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, in particular, there’s a terrific state of urgency, enhanced by obstacles and people to avoid. While reading the novel I had much the same feeling as one of those dreams where I need to get somewhere in a frantic hurry but am obstructed at every turn. Though caught up in the rush, I also felt irritated by it – the research, though potentially life-saving, didn’t require that kind of immediacy, and I kept being annoyed that Joanna’s priorities were directed toward that rather than the truly time-constrained situation of Maisie, a disaster-obsessed young girl with worsening heart failure.
It is this narrowed, urgent focus that leads to the biggest twist in Passage – having finally discovered the purpose of NDE’s, Joanna frantically searches Mercy General for Richard; hearing that another doctor with whom he’s associated has gone to the ER, where her best friend Vielle works as a senior nurse, she rushes down there. Joanna doesn’t see Richard, but she does see an anxious-looking Vielle talking with a young man – anxious to find Richard and tell him of her discovery, she interrupts the pair, only to find that the young man is armed with a knife, with which he stabs her. As the ER staff swings into action to try to save her, Joanna tries just as desperately to convey the information to Vielle, an effort that she takes with her into her final NDE.
And though I enjoyed Passage as a whole, this is where I detached from the text, because really – apart from the needs of the narrative, what was the rush? There aren’t going to be real world applications of any scientific advance, let alone one as esoteric as this, in anything under a couple of years, so waiting less than an hour for her next scheduled meeting with Richard wouldn’t have delayed anything.
The remaining couple of chapters alternate between Joanna’s new perspective, frantically trying to communicate her findings to Richard before it’s too late, and Richard’s attempts (assisted by Maisie, Vielle, another character whose plot thread I’ve not had space to explore and, unwittingly, Mandrake) to piece together what Joanna did for a missing hour and what relevance it had. This was interesting, and complemented the sense of haste woven through the novel, but I alternated my reading with thinking about what the book would have been like without this twist.
Each chapter opens with a death-related quote, from the last words of historical figures to the last letters of the famous, last messages from lost planes and sunk ships to live reports from broadcasters seeing a tragedy unfold before them. The characters are rounded and well drawn, and I found the research topic fascinating, particularly as it’s related to my own area of academic interest. I’ve yet to have any direct contact with a death survivor who talked about having an NDE, but was prepared to let that aspect go.
Despite its somewhat grim subject matter, there are touches of comedy in Passage. Joanna distresses Richard when, weeding through his participant list looking for Mandrakian ringers, she finds half a dozen who seemed find on Richard’s initial screening but who are True Believers associated with the near-death community, spies for Mandrake, or believe they’ve been abducted by aliens, or otherwise tainted. When Richard, outraged by her revelations, is surprised they weren’t all picked up by the preliminary psych profile, Joanna replies “Believing in the afterlife isn’t a mental illness; a number of major religions have been doing it for centuries.” There is also a romantic undertone, so that although nothing completely develops the reader is left with a strong sense of potential.
I also really enjoyed a thread I alluded to above and haven’t been able to explore here, which involved Mr Briarly, Joanna’s favourite high school teacher, now struggling with Alzheimer’s, and his niece Kit. Both the characters and the situation were beautifully portrayed, and I particularly liked the depiction of Alzheimer’s as a progressive death of personhood. There is also a recurring motif throughout the novel, clear in retrospect, that hints at the purpose of NDE’s; the characters in the book, like this reader, were equally blind to them, and in the last section they were also deaf to Mr Briarly’s remarks that, in a metaphysical communication with Joanna and with the part of him already gone, desperately tried to pass on a message.
I feel as though I’ve failed to capture all the elements of Passage that I’d like to – I haven’t, for example, given Maisie a fraction of the time she deserves, nor her fascination with disasters, the apparently tangential recurring Titanic/disaster motif, or even mentioned the confabulating Mrs Davenport. On the other hand perhaps, by having difficulty directly communicating what I intend, I’m doing Passage greater justice than I think. – Alex
To read Lynn’s review of Passage click here.
From the back of the book:
Do aspects of our personality survive our physical body? The fruit of many years research and experience by a world expert in the field, Is There An Afterlife? presents the most complete survey to date of the evidence, both historical and contemporary, for the survival of physical death. It looks at the question of what survives, in particular exploring the question of consciousness as primary to and not dependent on matter in the light of recent brain research and quantum physics. It discusses the possible nature of the afterlife, the common threads in Western and Eastern traditions, the common features of “many levels,” group souls and reincarnation.
The author of this fascinating work lists Fellow of the British Psychological Society, Past President of the Society for Psychical Research, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Cardiff University and much more amongst his qualifications. It is no surprise then, to find this book has a strong academic style. Extensive references are supplied for all the topics addressed and reported experiments include thorough descriptions of methodology with an emphasis on control of variables. While at times this can make for rather slow going it is worth the effort of reading such details in order to appreciate the results obtained. It is an ongoing lament of the author that there is so little academic interest (and funding) to repeat many of the experiments undertaken in the past.
The author takes great care to answer claims that much evidence of the afterlife can be dismissed as symptoms of mental illness, overactive imagination or outright fraud. While agreeing that many cases fall into these categories he searches for explanations for those that don’t and proposes that where no other reasonable explanation can be found that a paranormal one be considered.
He presents some of the more convoluted explanations for phenomena presented by critics for whom no evidence will ever be sufficient to accept a paranormal causation. He also presents paranormal explanations that have been put forward as alternatives to the concept of surviving death (some of which are almost as complex as those suggested by die-hard critics).
I have long believed in a number of parapsychological phenomena but had never given a lot of though to the details of what exactly they are, or process by which they occur. My image of the majority of investigators in the field was one of new-age hippies, gullible innocents and self-proclaimed experts of questionable pedigree, at best I imagined good academics gone bad. If nothing else, this book had opened my eyes to legitimate parapsychological research, an area I wish I’d known about twenty years ago when I was starting out on my academic career-I certainly would have pursued it then, and may still now-Lynn.
I have an academic interest in death and deathwork studies, and have only myself to blame for my unmet expectations of this comprehensive introduction to the philosophical issues that underpin the topic.Divided into two sections, dying and killing, Professor Luper explores the topic from a hard philosophical perspective. He opens by exploring what it means to be alive, then questions about whether death is harmful to the individual, before moving on to more applied aspects - killing, suicide and assisted suicide, and abortion. Throughout the tone is that of theoretical philosopher, incorporating hypothetical scenarios and argument theory, and drawing on the work of philosophers past and present, from Epicurus, Socrates and Plato, through Kant, Rawls and Schopenhauer, to Nagel, Nozick and Feinburg.This is, for the most part, familiar ground for me - I have a background in applied and theoretical ethical philosophy, and considerable applied and theoretical experience with death and dying. I saw the book on the library's recommended stand and jumped on it without examining the content at all. This lead me to expect a more applied, social science-based approach. The Philosophy of Death is, as its cover blurb announces, instead a "discussion of the basic philosophical issues concerning death, and a critical introduction tot he relevant contemporary literature." For anyone interested in, but new to the field, curious about how this richly explored subject has been approached over the ages, or keen to see argument theory applied, this is the book for you. I must admit that I flicked through it after the first chapter, and sadly found it more theoretical that my current interest allows. - Alex
Myra Lipinski has never demanded much of life. Her parents never really wanted her, she faded into the background at school, and she always figured that she didn't really deserve anything more. The bright spot in her life is her work - from the moment she began her nursing degree Myra was a star, captivated by the knowledge and skilled at the technical aspects, she moved from intensive care to home nursing, where her patients could speak to her and where she could see the impact she made on their lives.When Myra's allocated a new, terminal patient, she's a little thrilled to find it's Chip Reardon, the boy she always dreamed of at high school. With only months to live, is it too late for Myra to find love?Though more of a romance than any of Berg's other books, or at least those I've thus far read, Never Change is as much about the relationships Myra has with her patients, and with herself, as it is her developing relationship with Chip. Like her other books, though, Never Change is lyric, seamlessly crafted, and vibrantly real. I found it easy to relate to Myra,. whose life is not so very different from mine in a number of respects (though quite different in others), and was interested in her journey. Though I've connected more strongly with other of Berg's protagonists, I did very much enjoy the Never Change experience - Alex
Saffy Casson was eight when she discovered that her name was not on the colour chart that hung in her family kitchen. Oldest sister Caddy was there - as cadmiums lemon, deep yellow, scarlet and gold, younger brother Indigo was there amongst the blue and purple section, and baby Permanent Rose (who had come very close to being not at all permanent) was there, but no Saffron, however hard Saffy looked among the yellows. When, frustrated, she asked why, the annoying Health Visitor who was checking on Rose, and who continually compared her genius twin daughters unfavourably to the Casson children, asked their mother "Doesn't she know?" Which is how Saffy found out that her mother was really her aunt, her siblings her cousins, and her own mother was dead.The first in a quintet, Saffy's Angel is a delightful, touching and comic story about a truly unique family. Though Saffy's its' focus, we learn as much about the other members - beautiful but unfocused Caddy, half in love with her driving instructor, only male Indigo, ferociously defensive of his pack, determined Rose, the most artistic of the lot, their vague and artistic mother, challenged by shopping and not very interested in anything but her children and her art, and their Serious Artist father, who lives in London and visits when he has to. But most of all we learn about Saffy, who since her discovery has felt wholly an outsider, and who needs to find proof that she is loved and belongs.McKay writes with immediacy. Her characters are beautifully crafted, engaging and amusing and emotionally resonant. This series is probably less accessible to young male readers but is a great choice for young female readers; I've recommended it to several godparents, grandparents and friends. - Alex
Alida Salter's life has been, to a great extent, on hold since the tragic death of her infant daughter Kizzy thirteen years ago. When she receives a call in the middle of the night notifying her that her other daughter, Mia, has not been seen for a week and is feared dead, Alida flies to India to search for her, despite the protests of her ex-husband Ian. As she tries to find the daughter she lost the day Kizzy died, Alida discovers herself.I was initially tempted to put Breathing in Colour aside - part of Jay's Creative Writing PhD, it was irritatingly overwritten and heavy on the shadowing, with lines like "As usual Alida tried to shift her thoughts away from the event that had destroyed their happy balance"; "the telephone shrilled; a shocking sound in the silence which caused Alida to quickly swivel around in her chair to stare at it"; "her room was steeped in expectant silence"; and "in one smooth motion she gathered her limbs and leapt from the bed." I grant you, none of these in itself is particularly objectionable but, as is obvious from the last few posts, I'm not in a particularly indulgent place right now, and these grated. I also found the notification call, which is all Alida's responses, particularly annoying. However, mindful of the unprecedented number of books I've cast aside within a few pages of late, I decided to give Breathing in Colour more time to prove itself.I'm so glad I did. Combining Alida's present time journey with chronological snatches of Mia's memories, Breathing in Colour portrays a story of deep betrayal, loss, grief, joy, art, discovery, forgiveness and colour. India is the ideal setting, as that richly tapestried land beautifully complements the explosive assault to the senses Mia intermittently experiences - she has synesthesia, a condition where senses are cross-experienced so that noises have colour, textures are flavoured, and colours are textured.The new setting allows Alida to reexamine her past and her relationship with Mia. This is aided by the presence of Taos (rhymed with house), an Australian artist who encouraged Mia to express her lucid dreams as collages, which is turn provide Alida with clues about Mia's location. As Alida retraces Mia's footsteps, through a combination of knowing her daughter and these clues from Mia's abandoned room, Alida begins to express her own experiences through writing.Taos is travelling his own journey of exploration, and together they examine the weight and impact of memory and loss, grief and rebirth, patterns and numbers, the nature of self and the way we choose to view what happens to us. Vital to the narrative is art and self expression, and the role of the artist is explored in a way I both connected with myself (not an artist), and that an artist friend found resonant.I have long been fascinated by synesthesia, and this fictionalised account of the experience added a dimension to what would otherwise have still been an interesting, albeit less engaging, novel. Maybe I ought to revisit some of those works I recently thrust aside on only preliminary exploration. - Alex
Herald Tribute columnist Lily Waters rose above the distress of being abandoned, days after giving birth, by her professor husband. Abandoning her, the baby and their daughter, the Spawn of Satan took off for the UK with his student and has only been intermittently heard from since. Nine years on, and with the support of her best friend Michael Angelo, she has carved out a completely satisfying life that balances work and home, children and a life. Shortly after her fortieth birthday, as part of a breast cancer awareness column her boss wants her to write, Lily has a mammogram and discovers she has an aggressive cancer. Despite chemo and surgery Lily knows she's going to die. She also knows the Spawn, who has had next to nothing to do with the children, will feel guilt but not really want to take them on, and she can't imagine his Child Bride being keen either. But her only alternative is Michael, and though he's been part of her children's lives since birth, becoming a daddy at forty might cramp his cruising lifestyle. And even if that plan works out, the Spawn may not be so keen on a gay man raising the children he himself abandoned.Atypical for the genre, Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven is more tear-jerker disease novel than romance. We see only glimpses of Lily's family, and her central relationship is unquestionably Michael, who narrates half of the novel. He has unprocessed issues about his sexuality, increased by both estrangement from his macho Italian father and scarred by the traumatic and involuntary nature of his coming out at college, at the height of the AIDS epidemic. The HIV/AIDS atmosphere of the late eighties, equal parts hysteria (for the untouched wider community) and tragedy (for those affected) is well created.I found myself relating more to his story than hers, perhaps because he get to know him better - very little of pre-cancer Lily is revealed, making it harder to relate to her. I was also angered by the revolting treatment he was dealt by his team and coach, and found his story of unexpected parenthood compelling. That said, I did sob at the end of the novel, though I found the epilogue a little too twee and neat. This is my first Orloff novel, and I suspect it won't be the last. - Alex
Fifteen-year-old Harris Johnson, much to the distress of his mother, has long been interested in what happens to the dead. When he gets a work experience position at the State Coroner’s Office he’s thrilled – he’ll get to see what involved in determining cause of death. He thoroughly enjoys the experience, rotating through the grief counsellors’ office, sitting in on a case, inputting data, and learning about the many people required to solve the mystery of unclear deaths. He’s protected from actually seeing bodies, and has no particular desire to change that.
When, a few days after he starts, the body of a young woman is brought in though, the exercise becomes less academic and more real – Tansy is a murder victim, the daughter of one of the Coronial pathologists, and Harris had played with her as a child. The media attention to the case, the activities of a journalist, and an attempt on his own life, spur him on and Harris discovers links between Tansy’s case and a long-unsolved murder.
There’s no description of any distressing post-mortem details (not even a passing description of the autopsy suite), making it suitable for squeamish readers, and the chief effect of the book is normalise and encourage an interest in this vital area of health care. This is a strong and engrossing YA novel that conveys a strong but understated sense of place, an absorbing and believable plot paired with a protagonist who noticeably matures and grows over the course of the book. I’m hoping Pausacker has a sequel in the wings. - Alex
Some people who have experienced the death of someone close have vivid dreams about them; sense the strong presence of the dead person (or pet); smell a distinctive scent; or see butterflies or other creatures. In this book Heathcote-Jones, apparently a journalist, whose previous books include Seeing Angels, Psychic Pets, and They Walk Among Us, (sao you know what you're getting yourself into) has collected dozens or more of these experiences, which some believe are deliberate messages of comfort from beyond the grave, also known as After Death Communications (ADCs)
Heathcote-Jones has separated them into thematic groups that include: visions at the point of death (either a vision experienced by the dying person, or a visitation from the dying person to a relative unaware the person is dying); dreams (or “sleep-state ADCs” that are categorised as being extraordinarily vivid); symbols (like butterflies and wind) and signs (like stopped clocks); non-visual senses (scents, auditory communications, strokes or embraces), among others.
Apparently most of the people who experience ADCs feel comforted and at peace as a result of their message, and if that helps them in the grieving process it’s all to the good. That said, apparently somewhere between one in five and one in seven experiences are negative but underreported. There are, sadly, none of these more interesting stories compiled in After-Death Communications.
This is not an academic investigation, in that there is no critical analysis of these communications, merely a reporting of both the stories and of the Guggenheim After-Death Communication Project (a group I was heretofore unaware of). In her introduction Heathcote-Jones states that she has not had an experience like this herself, but was captured by the concept when she first heard of it, and felt compelled to bring this information to a wider audience. According to Heathcote-Jones “a shift is taking place... that is taking us away from science being the be all and end all, and into a more spiritual dimension. Anthropologically speaking, we have developed through differing eras – one of magic, followed by religion, then science… I would argue that, here and now, we are in the process of leaving the scientific era and heading toward a more spiritual outlook.”
Wow. Science didn’t get very long.
I’m not denying that the bereaved may have these experiences, and I certainly can’t categorically deny that the dead decide to visit some people, but I’m highly sceptical that these experiences aren’t a combination of wishful thinking and coincidence. Certainly people are more likely to be visited by dead pets if they rank their relationship with the pet as equal to or higher than other members of their family. My position is strengthened by never (in almost twenty years of being present while people are dying) seeing anyone reaching for loved ones not present, or talking to invisible persons who’ve already passed over, or being relieved by peace moments before death. Perhaps I’m just envious that none of the over a dozen people I’ve known well in my personal live have ever decided to send me a sign.
Or maybe they have and I just haven’t realised that thinking of someone around the anniversary of their death, or seeing a small host of butterflies, or having an olfactory memory unexpectedly waft by “is” a sign. But I have equally strong thoughts of people who are alive, have very vivid dreams that are unrelated to anything or anyone dead or dying, and get gustatory and olfactory ‘wafts’ that are unrelated to anyone dead.
Heathcote-Jones closes with a list of positive benefits of ADCs, all directed toward relieving the grief experienced by the bereaved person – expressing emotions, accepting death, “establishing a new relationship with the deceased loved one,” creating new rituals etc. There isn’t any discussion about what benefit there may be for the 14 – 20% (perhaps more, if they’re so underreported) people whose ADCs are unpleasant. Maybe I should be glad my dead loved ones have left me alone. - Alex
