Dying: A Memoir

by Cory Taylor

Overview

"Bracing and beautiful . . . Every human should read it." —The New York Times

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and 2017 Critics' Pick
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2017

At the age of sixty, Cory Taylor is dying of melanoma-related brain cancer. Her illness is no longer treatable: she now weighs less than her neighbor’s retriever. As her body weakens, she describes the experience—the vulnerability and strength, the courage and humility, the anger and acceptance—of knowing she will soon die.

Written in the space of a few weeks, in a tremendous creative surge, this powerful and beautiful memoir is a clear-eyed account of what dying teaches: Taylor describes the tangle of her feelings, remembers the lives and deaths of her parents, and examines why she would like to be able to choose the circumstances of her death.

Taylor’s last words offer a vocabulary for readers to speak about the most difficult thing any of us will face. And while Dying: A Memoir is a deeply affecting meditation on death, it is also a funny and wise tribute to life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941040713
Publisher:	Tin House Books
Publication date:	08/01/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	152
Sales rank:	937,256
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Cory Taylor was an award-winning novelist and screenwriter who also published short fiction and children’s books. Her first novel, Me and Mr. Booker, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Pacific Region) in 2012 and her second novel, My Beautiful Enemy, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2014. She died on July 5, 2016, shortly after Dying: A Memoir was published in Australia.

Editorial Reviews

…Dying is wry, devastating, and ultimately liberating in its unapologetic discussions of what's generally considered undiscussable.

The New York Times Book Review - Meghan Daum

Dying is bracing and beautiful, possessed of an extraordinary intellectual and moral rigor. Every medical student should read it. Every human should read it. My own copy is so aggressively underlined it looks like a composition notebook. Dying is short, but as dense as dark matter. There is an electrifying matter-of-factness to it, one that normalizes death, which is part of Taylor's goal…It is commonly said that end-of-life memoirs offer wisdom for the living. That is certainly true here. Dying has sharpened Taylor's vision, occasioning a thorough life inventory, and writing, her métier, has given her a chance to linearize her thoughts. "I am making a shape for my death, so that I, and others, can see it clearly," she writes, "and I am making dying bearable for myself." And for us.

The New York Times - Jennifer Senior

★ 02/13/2017
Australian writer Taylor, who found herself out of treatment options for melanoma-related brain cancer, reflects on the end of her life in this unflinchingly honest memoir. Taylor, who died in 2016, shares her emotions of anger, sadness and worry, especially for her loved ones, as well as her acceptance of the inevitable. She looks back on her childhood and family and recalls the fractured relationships of her parents and siblings, the joy of motherhood, and the unlikely and fantastic life of a writer. Taylor, who wrote the book in just a few weeks, considered the emptiness a nonreligious person such as her might face, and came to terms with it, providing a blueprint for those struggling with the same questions. This slender volume brings a fresh point of view to end-of-life care, the concept of having a sense of control over the unknown, and the role of chance in life. This deep meditation is beautifully written and destined to be an important piece of the conversation surrounding death. Taylor’s last testament to life is a welcome departing gift from a thoughtful and inspired author. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"This is a powerful, poignant and lucid last testament, at once an eloquent plea for autonomy in death, and an evocation of the joys, sorrows, and sheer unpredictability and precariousness of life. It's a fine contribution to our much-needed dialogue with death."

Margaret Drabble

"Cory Taylor's book is both 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

"Dying is a powerful, passionate, unflinching memoir about facing death and the choices and difficulty and beauty that entails. It should be required reading for all of us."

Ann Hood

"An electrifying book about dying that’s part dreamy reminiscence, part philosophical monograph. The author, reckoning with Stage 4 melanoma, demystifies the final experience of our lives, exploring questions of control, fear and regret. My copy is underlined like a composition notebook. 'For what are we,' Taylor asks, 'if not a body taking a mind for a walk, just to see what’s there?'"

The New York Times Book Review

"Dying is bracing and beautiful, possessed of an extraordinary intellectual and moral rigor. Every medical student should read it. Every human should read it. "

Jennifer Senior

"Honest, powerful, and moving . . . A deeply personal conversation about the alchemy of death, this brave memoir reveals the intimacy of the act, where 'we're like the last survivors on a sinking ship, huddled together for warmth.'"

Oprah.com

"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

"If a more open discussion of death is needed in the West, Taylor’s book is a manual for the task. It is full of wisdom and vulnerability; it is also profoundly reassuring. Dying, she repeatedly says, is deeply lonely. No one can do it with you. But this book might be a companion, made all the more solid by its lack of sentimentality and any other false comforts."

Times Literary Supplement

★ 2017-05-09
An eloquent plea for a more humane approach to death and a moving meditation on the life that leads to that end.Taylor (My Beautiful Enemy, 2014, etc.) was never a prolific novelist, but she makes every word count in this short memoir, published in her native Australia shortly before she died in the summer of 2016. "I've put off using my death as material for a long time, mainly because I couldn't find the right tone," she writes. "I'm not even sure I've found it now." Despite that note of uncertainty, the author's command of tone is masterful; her precise observance and unsentimental reflection take readers through the final stages of her fatal melanoma. It left her with so much gratitude at the richness of her life and significant regret over the loss of control a dying person experiences, given society's tendency to want to prolong life as long as possible. There are three parts to the memoir. The first focuses on Taylor's medical treatment, what led to it, and how she procured a drug from China that would allow her to commit suicide or to at least have that choice. The second encompasses the lives and deaths of her parents, whose marriage ended in tumult never resolved, and how the arrangements after those deaths intensified tension among the author and her siblings. There is a cautionary tale in this, a lesson she doesn't want her own loving family to have to learn. The third section evokes the author's childhood, what she remembers earliest and most vividly, and how life toward its end brings us full circle. "It's often said that life is short," she writes. "But life is also simultaneous, all of our experiences existing in time together, in the flesh." There is an ever expanding body of literature on coming to terms with mortality, and this entry ranks with the best.

Kirkus Reviews