This book, this CIRCLE OF WONDERS, is truly an awe-inspiring novel about death and grief, forgiveness and friendship and family. I cried. I too have lost a dear friend too soon, as in this story. I’ve lost a daughter much too young. Both to cancer. A trauma only understood by those who’ve experienced it. Author Kathryn Heyman writes about this loss with so much compassion and empathy and vulnerability.
CIRCLE OF WONDERS (Harper Collins) is a miraculous, profoundly sad tale of complicated love, estranged family, the unbreakable sisterhood of friendship, the complex relationships between mothers and their children, and the heart wrenching end-of-life decisions that must be made by people with a life-limiting illness. People who know they are soon leaving but do not want to go. People with regrets, dreams, wishes. People who mourn the past and yearn for it to be different. Those afraid of the future. And those around them, getting through the present, day by day, every little moment, every breath, every last … last bite, last sip, last word, last touch …
This novel celebrates those who leave us too early and all they leave behind for us. It commends those of us who stay, and continue to live, while our hearts are broken and the fabric of life itself frays and comes undone. This book is indeed a circle: of women, of friends, of love, of gratitude, of service. And it’s a book of wonders: birth, motherhood, friendship, music, art, song, dance, creativity, sharing, making peace, forgiveness, endings not going to plan yet anyway accepted, tolerance, feistiness, strength, courage and the capacity to survive life’s worst acts, thrown at us with the terrible force of warning and pre-knowledge, understanding that we cannot change what is to come, we can only get through it, moment by moment, and try to stay sane.
Roni is dying, her body shutting down. She creates a Book of Wonders in which she attempts to capture or notate all the many luminous moments of her life she has experienced, or wished to experience. She is leaving this life unprepared – her family fractured and fractious, her to-do list incomplete, her awful ex (‘the Drone’) hovering in the background like an opportunistic vulture. She doesn’t want to leave this precious life but her body gives her no choice. Time is running out, and with it, the chances she has to make things right, to forgive, to forget, to make peace.
Her own mother Sylvie, across the mountains and estranged, is already dying her own death. The two so close together seems too much for one family to bear. Her sister Anna, returned from London, full of petty grievances, a changed woman once she must face the death of her mother and her sister in the same month. Roni’s daughters, Belle and Shanti, one a reformed addict and one an absent sprite, each in their own way having to deal with their mother’s death, this woman who broke the rules of motherhood in so many ways, who let them down and abandoned them. And yet. As the hour of death, of leaving, draws closer, each must decide how to best accept this loss, for their own sakes and for their mother.
Heyman writes luminous, glowing, iridescent prose that sparkles with joy and humour amidst the pragmatic facts of dying (the body’s gradual dissemblance, the mind’s slowing, the emotional rollercoaster of knowing it is the end). Her characters are authentic, raw and flawed. The dialogue is real. The practicalities of death are true.
The terrible beauty of a cardboard coffin waiting to be inscribed with messages of love with crayons and paint. The meaning of flowers and food and incense and last gifts. A living wake, planned meticulously then almost abandoned, then reignited as something new.
If you have ever loved, read this book. If you are a mother, or a daughter, read this book. If you are a loyal friend, read this book. If you realise you are an awful partner or a bad friend or an unforgiving soul, read this book. If you know there is a line in the sand in relation to your past, and you refuse to cross it, no matter the pressure of society and friends to ‘let things go’, read this book. If you are human, read this book, because within it you will discover yourself and those you love. You will find connection and belonging. You will find awe and wonder. It might make you cry. Tears of recognition or tears of comprehension or tears of what might have been.
This novel will stay with me. Unforgettable. Teaching me the unteachable. Resonating on so many levels. Touching my heart.