The First Review is In For One Last Thing

ooh, I'm a poet and I didn't know it!

Just a quick one as I am busy writing and trying to make my deadline, and I’m still 1,300 words off today’s target, BUT I wanted to share the exciting news today that Wendy Mitchell and I received our first newspaper review of ONE LAST THING today and it was a good’un.

The Times published the review by Alice O’Keeffe and you can find it here if you are a Times subscriber:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/one-last-thing-by-wendy-mitchell-review-3jqxfz2v0

But for those who aren’t, here is a sneaky peak behind the paywall:

https://archive.is/SJ7YX

(Sshh, don’t tell anyone!)

Anyway, without wanting to pause too long from my current work in progress, the review was a brilliant one:

“It is ironic that we need somebody with a degenerative brain disease to help us see death more clearly,” writes O’Keeffe. “Although Mitchell, 67, writes movingly of the difficult days on which the fog descends, leaving her unable to think or remember much at all, her illness has also had a starkly clarifying effect. Once you have faced the prospect of losing your skills and interests, your most precious memories and your sense of self, nothing — not even death — feels that scary. In fact, Mitchell is in her cheerful and stoical way looking forward to it. She recently had a cancer scare that presented her with the tantalising possibility that she might be felled physically before completely losing her mind. This seemed on balance a win and when the doctor broke the “happy” news that she was cancer free, Mitchell felt only crushing disappointment.

“I hope that doesn’t sound depressing or morbid, because this book is anything but. Mitchell is the type of woman who, if humans were in any way rational, would run the world.”

I mean I would certainly second that and, most importantly, as her ghostwriter would that make me Deputy World Leader?!

“Our culture of death denial is why as a society we fail to invest enough in end-of-life care, meaning that too many people die in pain or after unpleasant and unnecessary medical intervention, or in hospital when they would rather be at home. It is the reason that many of us leave our finances and other practical affairs in a mess, increasing the burden for our loved ones. It is the reason that our leaders put off debating assisted dying, with which Mitchell engages powerfully and eloquently here.

“Ultimately, quality of death and quality of life are inseparable for both ourselves and our loved ones, and as Mitchell writes: ‘I don’t think there is a way of loving anyone more in this life than to grant them autonomy in death.’”

ONE LAST THING, Wendy’s final book, is out on June 22, and you can can of course pre-order here.