Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary
Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary Books
Product Description
In 1997 Rebecca Brown’s mother, Barbara Wildman Brown, became ill with cancer. In Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary the author traces, in sparse prose, the slow, gradual erosion of her mother’s health, her dignity and her life. In seventeen small chapters, from ‘anaemia’, ‘twilight sleep’ and ‘metastasis’, to ‘unction’, ‘cremation’ and ‘remains’, the author describes the family’s journey through her mother’s illness and death. Written unsentimentally, and with sometimes awkward honesty, Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary is an extraordinarily tender commemoration of a life and death.
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There’s no doubt the theme matter of this book is tender.
Everyone has to deal with death. But, subtract the private anguish intrinsic to the theme matter, and what remains is not so fascinating. The conceit of dictionary is used absolutely conventionally, literally, without any spins or innovation. I found it odd and overly literal to go thru the whole alphabet just like a fixed dictionary, from A to Z, with no attempt to “play.” The sentences are clearly written and detailed, but they are not philosophically fascinating; they simply reiterate the age ancient questions such as, why is there pain and death (perhaps there is not much else to question, unless the novelist gets truly creative, and questions such questions very indirectly, like Beckett). This book is a basically a clearly-written diary superimposed upon the form of a dictionary and the material that emerges is not the sum of the products. It is just two forms, diary and dictionary, jammed together for no clear literary purpose.
Rating: 1 / 5
This emergency, hard-bitten book comes out of that experience of witnessing the effects of chemotherapy, metastasis and like when watching her mother being lucid one moment, and less so the next. Her poignant and unflinching tale of how one family coped with loss and learned about the longevity of like. With her father being in the military, I’m curious as to how he is doing now. But her mother was met with grace, mercy and something kind to help her pass.
Rosemary for rememberance below a pillow is a detail in this book I reckon of whenever I touch rosemary and clip it from a shrub to cook. The living cope with grief, and sometimes it is as magical. Because everyone has experienced loss it is really helpful to the healing administer to read this book. This was first published in 2001 in a limited handset edition by Grey Spider Press. I have a copy of that limited edition and I treasure that greatly.
Rating: 5 / 5
Well I have been a doctor 26 years. My sister dies when I was 20 years. This is nearly poetic in its stark Hemingway style of narration of a loved mother’s death. I cannot reckon of anyone who should not read this book. Family, like, pain, compassion, loss, and a gorgeous family end.
Rating: 5 / 5
Having witnessed two in-laws passing on after terminal illnesses, I came into reading this powerful book with some experiences… but the tale EXCERPTS FROM A FAMILY MEDICAL DICTIONARY went me to tears, made me laugh (during one scene involving two sisters in the patch) and painstakingly saturated my senses for several hours…until I was absolutely drained…and satisfied. BRAVO!
Rating: 5 / 5
I greatly loved Rebecca Brown’s work. I had the opportunity to hear Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary when the author visited our college campus in September. I found her writing to be poetic and passionate, lingering somewhere between the worlds of prose and fiction. I was greatly went by her gorgeous descriptions of pain and loss. The format of the work as a dictionary also proved fascinating.
Rating: 5 / 5