31 Aug / Dying by Cory Taylor [in Booklist]
“I am making dying bearable for myself,” Cory Taylor reveals in her final book, originally published in her native Australia just months after she passed away in 2016 from melanoma-related brain cancer at 61. A euthanasia drug she bought online allowed Taylor some semblance of autonomy, “that [she] might yet be able to influence [her] fate.”
With that sense of control intact, Taylor wrote with crisp, unadorned clarity, determined to tell her own story about the difficult family she was born into and the nourishing haven she created with her husband and two sons. That beloved husband and their children’s faces became the “short answer to what [she’ll] miss most.” The long answer, “the world and everything in it.”
Australia-born, LA-domiciled Larissa Gallagher graciously, heart-wrenchingly gives Taylor posthumous voice. Gallagher’s voice remains soft and gentle, her vowels slightly elongated, the ends of her syllables down-under crisp. Her soothing presentation feels like a calming balm, tender and graceful despite the inevitable, moribund outcome.
Review: “Media,” Booklist Online, August 9, 2019
Readers: Adult
Published: 2017