The language of dying - Sarah Pinborough

A woman sits beside her father's bedside as the night ticks away the final hours of his life. As she watches over her father, she relives the past week and the events that brought the family together . . . and she recalls all the weeks before that served to pull it apart.

There has never been anything normal about the lives raised in this house. It seems to her that sometimes her family is so colourful that the brightness hurts, and as they all join together in this time of impending loss she examines how they came to be the way they are and how it came to just be her, the drifter, that her father came home to die with.

But, the middle of five children, the woman has her own secrets . . . particularly the draw that pulled her back to the house when her own life looked set to crumble. And sitting through her lonely vigil, she remembers the thing she saw out in the fields all those years ago . . . the thing that they found her screaming for outside in the mud. As she peers through the familiar glass, she can't help but hope and wonder if it will come again.

Because it's one of those night, isn't it dad? A special terrible night. A full night. And that's always when it comes. If it comes at all. 

My thoughts:

"There is a language to dying. It creeps like a shadow alongside the passing years and the taste of it hides in the corners of our mouths. It finds us whether we are sick or healthy."

This is the story of a woman who sits by her father bedside. Her siblings are sent for and they come. We learn their history, their history with their father. And later more about the narrator's life.

It's not a long book, it's a novella really. It is beautifully written. It never gets sad, it is just the way of things.

But there is also something in the shadows, something she once saw. The one thing that gives this the fantasy vibe, but only when she thinks of that. Never anywhere else. It was something strange....

It was a good, short book, that you can read in one sitting.

Paperback, 176 pages
Published December 1st 2016 by Jo Fletcher Books (first published 2009)
Fiction
In exchange for a review