The New York Times - Parul Sehgal
…a wild and brilliantly deceptive book. It is a putative guide to what happens to the body as it dies and directly after—and how to care for it…But in its loving, fierce specificity, this book on how to die is also a blessedly saccharine-free guide for how to live…This is death viewed with rare familiarity, even warmth…Tisdale does not write to allay anxieties but to acknowledge them, and she brings death so close, in such detail and with such directness, that something unusual happens, something that feels a bit taboo. She invites not just awe or dread—but our curiosity.
Publishers Weekly
04/30/2018
Tisdale (Violation: Collected Essays), a former nurse, offers an intimate insider’s look at dying, aimed at both caregivers and mortally ill people. By turns philosophical and pragmatic, Tisdale gently prods readers to make plans while they can. She meditates on the possibility of procuring a “good death,” surveys body disposal practices from different times and cultures, and compassionately illustrates her themes with anecdotes from the lives and deaths of close friends. They include Carol, a lawyer who “had rarely been sick in her life” but was diagnosed with breast cancer soon after being elected as her rural county’s first female judge, and Butch, an ex-con diagnosed with liver cancer a few years after being released from the prison he’d spent most of his adult life in. Much of the book is organized chronologically, with various chapters charting the “Last Months,” “Last Weeks,” “Last Days,” and “That Moment.” Of particular note are the appendices on advance directives, organ donation, and euthanasia, which are written in clear, accessible language. Tisdale’s forthright narrative voice, charmingly bossy in style (“Be very careful about odors.... You don’t want to be the most nauseating thing that happens in the day”), is so generous and kind in spirit that readers will gladly follow along. (June)
From the Publisher
In its loving, fierce specificity, this book on how to die is also a blessedly saccharine-free guide for how to live. . . . Tisdale does not write to allay anxieties but to acknowledge them, and she brings death so close, in such detail and with such directness, that something unusual happens, something that feels a bit taboo. She invites not just awe or dread—but our curiosity. And why not? We are, after all, just 'future corpses pretending we don’t know.'”
—New York Times
“Tisdale (Violation: Collected Essays), a former nurse, offers an intimate insider’s look at dying, aimed at both caregivers and mortally ill people. By turns philosophical and pragmatic, Tisdale gently prods readers to make plans while they can ... Tisdale’s forthright narrative voice, charmingly bossy in style (“Be very careful about odors.... You don’t want to be the most nauseating thing that happens in the day”), is so generous and kind in spirit that readers will gladly follow along.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Sallie Tisdale’s elegantly understated new book pretends to be a user’s guide when in fact it’s a profound meditation. It also pretends to be about how to die. Actually, it’s about how to live.”
—David Shields, author of Reality Hunger
"Reading the book is like having a nice, long chat with an unsqueamish friend. . . Tisdale writes warmly, sharing what she knows with a natural gift."
—Portland Tribune
"Sallie Tisdale is the real thing, a writer who thinks like a philosopher, observes like a journalist, and sings on the page like a poet"
—Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable
"I read Sallie Tisdale and within a few seconds I am under her spell. It matters not whether she's writing about the tyranny of weight loss, the startling lives of blowflies, or what it's like to work in an oncology ward (she is a dedicated nurse as well as a brilliant writer), I'm all in, all the time. I will go anywhere she wants to take me. An alternate image—climbing into a submarine with Tisdale at the controls and diving down down down, into her singular sensibility, her genius for language,her love of our deeply imperfect world."
—Karen Karbo, author of Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life
"Sallie Tisdale takes subjects that might seem mundane or overdone and renders them unforgettable"
—San Francisco Examiner
