Oddly, or perhaps not oddly, come to think of it, the smoking ban came into effect about three days after I got the news - yes, now I do come to think of it, it seems more than odd, it seems eerily consequential, suggesting among other possibilities that I am so innately, organically obedient that my whole physical system submitted to the law in spite of my habits and inclination, and that my inner opposition to it was immediately met by the most appropriate and natural punishment - lung cancer.
So reflects the celebrated diarist and playwright Simon Gray during this frank, profoundly moving and often painfully funny account of what he refers to as 'the beginning of my dying'. During a holiday with his wife in Crete, Gray recalls the scans, consultations and biopsies that have dominated the previous months while offering unforgettable portraits of fellow tourists and digressions on everything from lying to the maître d' and concerns about tipping to crimes of passion and his new-found obsession with obituaries.
Written with a great generosity of spirit and a poignant reluctance to leave this world behind, Simon Gray's Coda is as life-affirming as it is heart-rending.
'I can't imagine a finer book for a writer to go out on - An absolutely extraordinary achievement' Front Row
'Few books have ever been more immediate, more rooted in the present tense' Mail on Sunday
'The effortless, rambling style he's accidentally found himself cultivating here reaches its zenith - He finishes not in ugly mid-sentence but clearly, cleanly, perfectly. A casually perfect but unexpectedly painful early full stop to a life and a mind for which we are immeasurably richer' Observer
'His beautifully written, addictively readable, unsparingly honest journals are his greatest achievement - and will survive the test of time' Telegraph
'Those many readers who have enjoyed the three previous volumes of The Smoking Diaries will find this one every bit as compelling: less funny, despite frequent shafts of wit, considerably more moving' Scotsman
'Mordantly funny, unsparing of himself and others, desperately brave, it is both compulsive and agonising to read' Sunday Telegraph An Evening Standard
'Best Book of 2008': 'Wittily digressive, deeply humane and excruciatingly honest' 'An effortlessly astonishing piece of writing that established Gray without a doubt among the great autobiographers' Literary Review
Author
About Simon Gray
Simon Gray (October 21, 1936 – August 7, 2008) was a playwright and diarist. Four volumes of his memoirs, The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer and, The Last Cigarette and, most recently, Coda are published by Granta Books. Gray’s Enter a Fox and Fat Chance are published in their second editions by Granta Books.
