annethology
  • Home
    • About Annethology
    • About me >
      • A little more about me
    • About my books
    • Author talks
    • Contact me
    • Forthcoming events
    • World Mental Health Day
    • Privacy
    • Sign up for my newsletter
  • Sugar and Snails
    • Acknowledgements
    • Blog tour, Q&A's and feature articles >
      • Birthday blog tour
      • S&S on tour 2022
    • Early endorsements
    • Events >
      • Launch photos
      • Launch party videos
    • in pictures
    • Media
    • If you've read the book
    • Polari
    • Reading group questions
    • Reviews
    • In the media
  • Underneath
    • Endorsements and reviews
    • Launch party and events
    • Pictures
    • Questions for book groups
    • The stories underneath the novel
  • Matilda Windsor series
    • Matilda Windsor >
      • What readers say
      • For book groups
      • Interviews, articles and features
      • Matty on the move
      • Who were you in 1990?
      • Asylum lit
      • Matilda Windsor media
    • Stolen Summers >
      • Stolen Summers reviews
  • Short stories
    • Somebody’s Daughter
    • Becoming Someone (anthology) >
      • Becoming Someone (video readings)
      • Becoming Someone reviews
      • Becoming Someone online book chat
    • Print and downloads
    • Read it online
    • Quick reads
  • Free ebook
  • Annecdotal
    • Annecdotal blog
    • Annecdotal Press
    • Articles >
      • Print journalism
      • Where psychology meets fiction
    • Fictional therapists
    • Reading and reviews >
      • Reviews A to H
      • Reviews I to M
      • Reviews N to Z
      • Nonfiction
      • Themed quotes
      • Reading around the world
  • Shop
    • Inspired Quill (my publisher)
    • Bookshop.org (affiliate link)
    • Amazon UK
    • Amazon US
    • books2read

About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

Awaiting the Grim Reaper: The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy and The A-Z of You and Me

12/3/2015

10 Comments

 
Picture
Ivo lies in bed in a hospice, part of him, at only forty, unable to accept that he’s there. His favourite nurse, Sheila, suggests he play a game to keep his mind occupied: composing an A-Z of body parts, each linked to a tale about his life. He addresses these to an initially unnamed other – using as a form of the second-person point of view I’ve discussed in a previous post – who turns out to be his girlfriend, Mia, now sorely missed.

Ivo was born into a loving family but, after his father died when he was only six, he’s always had difficulty avoiding the influence of the wrong kind of friends. An insulin-dependent diabetic from his late teens, like some other young people with the condition, he doesn’t always attend sufficiently to his self-care. On top of this, there’s Malachy, his best friend from school and his elder sister’s partner, tempting him to sample a cornucopia of drug-fuelled highs. As Ivo’s condition worsens, and the hospice staff recommend morphine for the management of this pain, he becomes increasingly anxious about the prospect of a visit from Malachy from whom he’s become estranged.

The A-Z game is a clever structure for a novel revisiting a character’s history in a non-linear fashion, which fits the unfolding story extremely well. Yet I didn’t feel as engrossed in Ivo’s narrative as much as I thought I might, although the way in which friendship structures conspire against those attempting to break a habit was beautifully evoked. (For example, Mia’s advocacy of a healthy lifestyle is reinterpreted as possessive and over-controlling by Malachy and the rest.) For me, however, for a novel structured around body parts with a narrator approaching his death, it wasn’t quite as visceral as I wanted it to be. Nevertheless, a promising debut and I thank Doubleday for my advance proof copy.
Picture
Queenie sits in the day room of another hospice, grieving for the sea garden she tended for twenty years. In an attempt to tidy up the strands of her life, she writes to tell an old friend she has terminal cancer. Detecting some unfinished business, Sister Mary Inconnue persuades her to write more fully of the feelings she’s been hitherto unable to share, making this not just another hospice novel, but another you story.

This is the other side of Rachel Joyce’s bestselling debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, in which an older man sets out on foot to try to reach the bedside of a former colleague and friend before she dies. Not having read that, I thought I might be disadvantaged, but the chatter of the hospice patients and staff ensured I was aware of his improbable 600 mile journey and its slow progress across the book. While I enjoyed the unfolding account of Queenie’s life, and her chaste romance with Harold (reminiscent of the popular movie, Brief Encounter, from the days of black-and-white), as well as the hints of betrayal, I was probably more excited about her subsequent years in an isolated wooden bungalow amongst the dunes on Embleton Bay, which I used to pass on one of my favourite walks when I lived up that way. Although I was underwhelmed by the hospice sections, which I found neither convincing nor particularly funny, the marvellous ending cast a different slant on the journey I’d taken with Queenie, cancelling out the limitations I’d felt along the way. Thanks to Curtis Brown book group for my copy of The Love Song, published by Doubleday last year.

As the discussion on my right to die post testifies, how we die is an interesting topic both in and out of fiction, and the working with dying people can be an emotional challenge. A hospice has a unique atmosphere, part hospital, part church hall which, in the right hands, is ripe for dark humour. It’s also the perfect setting for a life-review novel, the tension building as we wonder if our hero will achieve their goal before the ultimate deadline. In addition, physical pain, as well as the morphine that might be used to alleviate it, plays havoc with one’s thought processes, creating unreliable narrators par excellence.

I was interested in the similarities and differences between these fictionalised hospices. While James Hannah’s seems particularly understaffed, Rachel Joyce’s swarms with nuns who have so little to do they can pass the time doing jigsaw puzzles. While people die (as you’d expect) in both institutions, in the first it’s as if the patients have already said goodbye to the world (or, to be fair, Ivo has) and rarely appear outside their rooms. In the second, on the other hand, there are daily excursions to the communal area where they trade quips and insults, and catch up on Harold Fry’s trek, or sleep, as if in a nursing home with years ahead of them. They even have a visit from the “counselling unit”, a woman dressed head to toe in purple, who is even less equipped to address their anxieties about death than the regular staff. While neither of these totally matched my own (albeit limited) impressions of such places, it was fun to visit for a while.

Have you read any hospice fiction? Would the topic interest you?


Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
10 Comments
Charli Mills link
12/3/2015 04:02:21 pm

What oddly comes to mind in answer to your question are several westerns that I've read where the hero heads somewhere, knowing that he is at the end of his life (tuberculosis or mortally wounded). Ultimately he dies in a shootout. Cowboy hospice? Probably not, but my experience with hospice has been with caregivers who come to the home. My uncle died at home with his wife and children at his side, under the care of hospice. I've had friends who have had parents or friends die at home under hospice care and all express deep gratitude for the pain management, dignity of life and a peaceful passing at home. So when you mention hospice care at a center, I'm unfamiliar with it. We have nursing homes and sometimes hospice caretakers attend to patients at the end. So--not sure I've given such a setting much thought. It is an intriguing one and I like the points you make regarding potential for an unreliable narrator, life-review and dark humor. Interesting books to review and compare!

Reply
Annecdotist
13/3/2015 06:29:44 am

What a clever idea, Charli, the doomed cowboy as part of the same genre. Although I can't remember any specific ones, I'm sure I've seen lots of those movies.
Sorry the idea of the hospice as a centre confused you. Here we do have hospice services provided at home but I believe the movement started first as a residential service, like a small hospital but intended to be more homely.

Reply
Charli Mills
16/3/2015 10:30:17 am

A big trend now is assisted living -- you get your meals, meds and 24 hour care, but live in your own private apartment or condo. However, such places are very expensive.

In the western genre, female characters typically go west to find a man; male characters go west to die heroically. That's probably an over-generalization, but typical in the romanticized versions popularized by authors like Louis L'Amor and Zane Grey.

Annecdotist
16/3/2015 10:45:49 am

You're too right, different trajectories for female and male characters in those movies!

geoff link
14/3/2015 09:25:36 am

I read the pilgrimage and it was splendid so am looking forward to the Queenie follow up. Your review has wetted the appetite. I read a hospice scene in the Two Caravans follow up by Marinka Lewyka (a short history of tractors in Ukraine) which was very funny. As you say death is a great place for humour and a splendid last hurrah. Perhaps having spent the last couple of days in hospital I should not be reading this but it is oddly uplifting!

Reply
Annecdotist
14/3/2015 10:37:45 am

I'm sure you'll like Queenie if you enjoyed the Pilgrimage – and what better incentive to visit the Northumberland coast? I didn't read Two Caravans as I didn't enjoy Tractors but good to hear someone else is doing the hospice thing.
Glad you're out now and the Grim Reaper didn't get you! Take care, though, laughter after surgery can hurt.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
14/3/2015 10:23:32 pm

I can't recall, at the moment, reading a book set in a hospice. Over the past few years, before my Mum passed away, I did have a little experience with them though. I think what you are calling a hospice is possibly similar to what we call a nursing home. Mum had a stint in each of two nursing home. The first was horrible and perhaps more like what you describe with people not venturing outside their rooms. It was most unsuitable for Mum and she should not have been there at all. Most "patients" were suffering dementia and Mum was not. She was given an incorrect medical report by an incompetent doctor and admitted there to die. It took us three months to get her out of there and back home for another 18 months. The second one was much more homely but with excellent nursing care. She had the last four or five weeks of her life there, and it was more like the second one you described with lovely volunteers to play games with, communal areas and meals, and supportive staff. She was lucid until the very end. I guess my point is that hospices and nursing homes may vary greatly from each other.
The idea of writing a life story with alphabetical body parts as the thread seems very creative. I'm not even sure I could think of a body part for each letter. I'd have to do a bit of research first!
Thanks for sharing these reviews. As that final part of my life seems to be fast approaching, though I'm certainly not ready to kick out for quite a while yet, thoughts about how I'll spend my final years cross my mind. I'm looking forward to options. (Like not dying?)

Reply
Annecdotist
16/3/2015 10:51:37 am

Sorry for your mother's experience, Norah, and I hope you don't kick the bucket for a while yet!
I'm not sure that the hospice is the same as a nursing home – we have those here too providing long-term care for the frail elderly who can no longer manage at home. But a hospice is specifically for people who are dying (of course, we're all dying, but I'm talking about short-term) with specialists in end of life care focusing on pain relief and keeping people as comfortable as possible. As I said, my experience is quite limited, but I think the patients there are generally extremely sick, often in the end stages of cancer.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
17/3/2015 04:02:40 am

Thanks for that clarification, Anne. I guess that a hospice is somewhere for palliative care, which is what they supposed Mum required when first admitted. As I said though, they had a whole list of illnesses on her chart that she didn't have. The doctor at the home was going to keep her 'comfortable'! She wasn't very comfortable in a totally inappropriate situation.
I have no intention of kicking the bucket for a while yet - too many blogs to read! :)

Reply
Annecdotist
18/3/2015 04:38:07 am

Yes, PALLIATIVE care – that's the missing word that would have clarified it for people!
But how awful for your mother to be put in such a place when it wasn't what she needed.
Yup, none of us can die when we got so much unfinished business around the blogs 😁

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Free ebook: click the image to claim yours.
    Picture
    OUT NOW: The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home
    Picture
    Find a review
    Picture
    Fictional therapists
    Picture
    Picture
    About Anne Goodwin
    Picture
    My published books
    entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
    Picture
    My latest novel, published May 2021
    Picture
    My debut novel shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize
    Picture
    Picture
    My second novel published May 2017.
    Picture
    Short stories on the theme of identity published 2018
    Anne Goodwin's books on Goodreads
    Sugar and Snails Sugar and Snails
    reviews: 32
    ratings: 52 (avg rating 4.21)

    Underneath Underneath
    reviews: 24
    ratings: 60 (avg rating 3.17)

    Becoming Someone Becoming Someone
    reviews: 8
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.56)

    GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4 GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 4
    reviews: 4
    ratings: 9 (avg rating 4.44)

    The Best of Fiction on the Web The Best of Fiction on the Web
    reviews: 3
    ratings: 3 (avg rating 4.67)

    2022 Reading Challenge

    2022 Reading Challenge
    Anne has read 2 books toward their goal of 100 books.
    hide
    2 of 100 (2%)
    view books
    Picture
    Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.  
    Picture
    Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin: 
    reader, writer,

    slug-slayer, tramper of moors, 
    recovering psychologist, 
    struggling soprano, 
    author of three fiction books.

    LATEST POSTS HERE
    I don't post to a schedule, but average  around ten reviews a month (see here for an alphabetical list), 
    some linked to a weekly flash fiction, plus posts on my WIPs and published books.  

    Your comments are welcome any time any where.

    Get new posts direct to your inbox ...

    Enter your email address:

    or click here …

    RSS Feed


    Picture

    Tweets by @Annecdotist
    Picture
    New short story, “My Dirty Weekend”
    Picture
    Let’s keep in touch – subscribe to my newsletter
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Popular posts

    • Compassion: something we all need
    • Do spoilers spoil?
    • How to create a convincing fictional therapist
    • Instructions for a novel
    • Looking at difference, embracing diversity
    • Never let me go: the dilemma of lending books
    • On loving, hating and writers’ block
      On Pop, Pirates and Plagiarism
    • READIN' for HER reviews
    • Relishing the cuts
    • The fast first draft
    • The tragedy of obedience
    • Writers and therapy: a love-hate relationship?

    Categories/Tags

    All
    Animals
    Annecdotist Hosts
    Annecdotist On Tour
    Articles
    Attachment Theory
    Author Interviews
    Becoming Someone
    Being A Writer
    Blogging
    Bodies
    Body
    Bookbirthday
    Books For Writers
    Bookshops
    CB Book Group
    Character
    Childhood
    Christmas
    Classics
    Climate Crisis
    Coming Of Age
    Counsellors Cafe
    Creative Writing Industry
    Creativity
    Cumbria
    Debut Novels
    Disability
    Editing
    Emotion
    Ethics
    Ethis
    Family
    Feedback And Critiques
    Fictional Psychologists & Therapists
    Food
    Friendship
    Futuristic
    Gender
    Genre
    Getting Published
    Giveaways
    Good Enough
    Grammar
    Gratitude
    Group/organisational Dynamics
    Hero’s Journey
    History
    Humour
    Identity
    Illness
    Independent Presses
    Institutions
    International Commemorative Day
    Jane Eyre
    Kidney Disease
    Language
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Live Events
    Lyrics For The Loved Ones
    Marketing
    Matilda Windsor
    Memoir
    Memory
    Mental Health
    Microfiction
    Motivation
    Music
    MW Prequel
    Names
    Narrative Voice
    Nature / Gardening
    Networking
    Newcastle
    Nonfiction
    Nottingham
    Novels
    Pandemic
    Peak District
    Perfect Match
    Poetry
    Point Of View
    Politics
    Politics Current Affairs
    Presentation
    Privacy
    Prizes
    Psychoanalytic Theory
    Psychology
    Psycholoists Write
    Psychotherapy
    Race
    Racism
    Rants
    Reading
    Real Vs Imaginary
    Religion
    Repetitive Strain Injury
    Research
    Reviewing
    Romance
    Satire
    Second Novels
    Settings
    Sex
    Shakespeare
    Short Stories General
    Short Stories My Published
    Short Stories Others'
    Siblings
    Snowflake
    Somebody's Daughter
    Stolen Summers
    Storytelling
    Structure
    Sugar And Snails
    Technology
    The
    The Guestlist
    Therapy
    TikTok
    TNTB
    Toiletday
    Tourism
    Toxic Positivity
    Transfiction
    Translation
    Trauma
    Unconscious
    Unconscious, The
    Underneath
    Voice Recognition Software
    War
    WaSBihC
    Weather
    Work
    Writing Process
    Writing Technique

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Picture
    BLOGGING COMMUNITIES
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from havens.michael34, romana klee, mrsdkrebs, Kyle Taylor, Dream It. Do It., adam & lucy, dluders, Joybot, Hammer51012, jorgempf, Sherif Salama, eyspahn, raniel diaz, E. E. Piphanies, scaredofbabies, Nomadic Lass, paulternate, Tony Fischer Photography, archer10 (Dennis), slightly everything, impbox, jonwick04, country_boy_shane, dok1, Out.of.Focus, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Midwest Region, Elvert Barnes, guillenperez, Richard Perry, jamesnaruke, Juan Carlos Arniz Sanz, El Tuerto, kona99, maveric2003, !anaughty!, Patrick Denker, David Davies, hamilcar_south, idleformat, Dave Goodman, Sharon Mollerus, photosteve101, La Citta Vita, A Girl With Tea, striatic, carlosfpardo, Damork, Elvert Barnes, UNE Photos, jurvetson, quinn.anya, BChristensen93, Joelk75, ashesmonroe, albertogp123, >littleyiye<, mudgalbharat, Swami Stream, Dicemanic, lovelihood, anyjazz65, Tjeerd, albastrica mititica, jimmiehomeschoolmom