Dying A Memoir Synopsis
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 STELLA PRIZE. In the year before her death, as she struggled with an untreatable illness, Cory Taylor began to write about her experiences, the patterns of her life, and of those she had lost. Dying is about vulnerability and strength, courage and humility, and anger. It is also about the acceptance that it takes to live a good life and say goodbye to it in peace.
About This Edition
Cory Taylor Press Reviews
'Unsparing in its insights and observations, breathtaking in its courage and generosity. A thing of lightness and beauty' Guardian
'Serves as a reminder, amid the omnishambles of today's world, that life is transient and death final ... Her luminous voice, touching on the fragility of life, the randomness of death ... is one worth listening to' The Times
'A manual for the discussion of death, full of wisdom, vulnerability and reassurance ... For all of Cory Taylor's acceptance of the inevitable, Dying contains a will to live on, and a conviction that for as long as we are remembered, we remain present' Times Literary Supplement
'Lucid, precise, unsentimental prose ... its clear-sighted compassion might have something to teach any mortal' Irish Times
'This small, powerful book offers a clean engagement with life's conclusion: with clarity and courage, the author finds words to escort us towards silence' -- Hilary Mantel
'A precise and moving memoir about the randomness of family, and an admirable intellectual response to the randomness of life and death. We should all hope for as vivid a looking-back, and as cogent a looking-forward, when we reach the end ourselves' -- Julian Barnes
'An inquiry into western society's dysfunctional relationship with mortality, and a luminous account of one writer's search for a good death of her own' Guardian
'Brave and funny, rare and honest, it sees her address everything from suicide (she considers it) to a bucket list (she doesn't have one; she's happy with what she's done in her life) ... Beautiful' The Bookseller, July Book of the Month
'An amazingly good and valuable book' -- Diana Athill
'A powerful, poignant and lucid last testament. At once an eloquent plea for autonomy in death, and an evocation of the joys, sorrows and precariousness of life' -- Margaret Drabble
