Coda is Simon Gray's powerful account of the year in which he struggled to come to terms with terminal lung cancer. Darkly comic depictions of the medical team are set against joyful accounts of sunlit days with this beloved wife, Victoria. Written with exceptional candour and a poignant reluctance to leave this world behind, Simon Gray's Coda is as life-affirming as it is heartrending.
Coda is Simon Gray's powerful account of the year in which he struggled to come to terms with terminal lung cancer. Darkly comic depictions of the medical team are set against joyful accounts of sunlit days with this beloved wife, Victoria. Written with exceptional candour and a poignant reluctance to leave this world behind, Simon Gray's Coda is as life-affirming as it is heartrending.
Sadly, Coda is being published posthumously, as Gray died in August 2008.
'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.
Coda is Simon Gray's powerful account of the year in which he struggled to come to terms with terminal lung cancer. Darkly comic depictions of the medical team are set against joyful accounts of sunlit days with this beloved wife, Victoria.
Coda features in the following genres: Biographies & Autobiographies, Biography, Literature and Literary studies
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Coda was written by Simon Gray and published by Granta Books
