March 2010 Editor's Choice.
An incredibly moving account of a widow’s grief, this does not make for comfortable reading all of the time but it is a raw and honest account of the various stages that grief takes on and how one woman is coping. Whether you have had a similar experience or not this is a compelling, powerful and emotional read.
Dear Reader,
Why Not Me? is the deeply effecting memoir of a young mother whose husband died of cancer three years ago, leaving her with twin sons, aged four. It may seem a strange recommendation for an Editor’s Choice: there is no ‘happy ending’, no easy solution. But the book deserves to be championed because of the breath-taking, even brutal, candour with which the author describes her predicament. The sheer force of the writing distinguishes this book – it has a beautiful clear voice, and a remarkable lack of inhibition.
Barbara’s husband Nick, the much-loved presenter of BBC’s World At One, was first diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2003. Almost overnight Barbara had to adapt to becoming the prime carer of a disabled person, and then a widow and a single mother.
Whether it’s her account of the initial diagnosis, their trip to hospital for the amputation, her last minutes with Nick before he died, having to tell the boys that Daddy had gone, she has a cinematographic ability to relay each scene in unforgettable clarity. Her experience of losing the man she loved so much, of her subsequent breakdown, of attempting to have a relationship with another man - much to some of her friends’ disapproval - are all recounted with intimate precision.
The title of the book comes from something Nick said to Barbara when he was first diagnosed:
I don’t spend a lot of time thinking, ‘Why me?’ People always say that’s what you must think but I don’t. If you’re slightly fatalistic about cancer, as I am, then you always think ‘why not me?’
Nick (Audio Diary April 4th 2006)
Barbara’s book will surely give enormous comfort to anyone suffering the loss of a loved one, as well as giving anyone trying to be supportive a greater understanding of what it’s like to be bereaved.
I hope you’ll agree that Why Not Me? is an exceptional piece of writing – and an unforgettable memoir.
Lucinda McNeile
Editor
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
