"Raymond Carver once wrote about loving everything that increases me. This book increased me. It is fearless and luminous and full of grace; it travels to the edge of death and finds life there. Its attention to the particulars of love—between the ones who will go and the ones they will leave—is something close to sublime." Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams
“Moreira Marques pays tribute to the palliative care doctor, yet she also delivers a fierce warning to the more foolish and damaging aspirations of contemporary medicine.” Iona Heath, author of Matters of Life and Death: Key Writings
“Written with great compassion, and with the economy and precision usually reserved for poetry.” Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being
“Moreira Marques’ great achievement is to situate dying so squarely within life itself. She liberates death and dying back into the messy business of living.” Anne Karpf, author of How to Age
"A brilliant book which pushes the boundaries, not only of literary reportage but of literary genres in general, to discuss that most intimate of moments: death . . . Death isn’t good or bad, death is; and Susana Moreira Marques writes about it in her first book in a way that can only be done by great writers." Isabel Lucas, Público
"An extremely rare event: a book capable of creating its own form, inventing on the way a new literary genre." José Mário Silva, Expresso
"One of the best books ever written about the meaning of life’s end." Ana Dias Ferreira, Time Out Lisbon
"Susana Moreira Marques has written a book you cannot categorise." José Riço Direitinho, Revista Ler
“To read Now and at the hour of our death is to better recognise the glitzy clichés and ragged euphemisms with which we dress up our mortality, and when to value or discard them. It is to embrace the fact that we are not gods. It is to define a good death. It is to 'know you are a machine and not feel saddened but, rather, liberated by the thought'. It is to travel to the land of malady, and back again.” Laura Garmeson, 3AM magazine
“A beautifully crafted, powerful meditation on the nature of existence” Booktrust
"A slim volume with not a syllable wasted." Akanos
“Some of the individual aphorisms wonderfully encapsulate the sense of lost control that death brings, and the relief of getting back to the basics of breath and beauty” Rebecca Foster, Nudge
“The amount to which Moreira Marques manages to get these strangers to open up to her is remarkable.” Kate Gardner, For Books’ Sake
“Susana Moreira Marques’s unique and quietly devastating book follows death as it goes about its grim work in the rugged and isolated wine growing region of Planalto Mirandês, Trás-os-Montes, in the north eastern corner of Portugal.” Julian Hanna, Minor Literatures
“For Moreira Marques, what divinity there is can be found only in the quiet beauty that would otherwise go unnoticed, in that artist’s refuge, the details.” Alex Kalamaroff, Entropy Magazine
“An intriguing work of non-fiction, Marques takes a fresh look at death through the eyes of a palliative care team . . . With great compassion she listens to those facing death and recounts their stories in their own words.” Big Issue North
“The writing is compassionate but unsentimental, taking in the bodily indignities of death alongside the beauty of the landscape and a vanishing way of life. The fragmentary structure lends an air of visceral realism, but also a slightly unsatisfactory, unfinished feel. Still, this is a powerful, harrowing book that would repay a second reading – if one could bear it.” The Lady
“This is book which stares death in the face and doesn’t flinch. There is no attempt to make it meaningful, or raise it beyond the often painful, and sometimes prolonged, process it is. Marques’ journey is perhaps one we should all be prepared to take.” 1streading’s Blog
"Raymond Carver once wrote about loving everything that increases me. This book increased me. It is fearless and luminous and full of grace; it travels to the edge of death and finds life there. Its attention to the particulars of love—between the ones who will go and the ones they will leave—is something close to sublime." Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams
“Moreira Marques pays tribute to the palliative care doctor, yet she also delivers a fierce warning to the more foolish and damaging aspirations of contemporary medicine.” Iona Heath, author of Matters of Life and Death: Key Writings
“Written with great compassion, and with the economy and precision usually reserved for poetry.” Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being
“Moreira Marques’ great achievement is to situate dying so squarely within life itself. She liberates death and dying back into the messy business of living.” Anne Karpf, author of How to Age
"A brilliant book which pushes the boundaries, not only of literary reportage but of literary genres in general, to discuss that most intimate of moments: death . . . Death isn’t good or bad, death is; and Susana Moreira Marques writes about it in her first book in a way that can only be done by great writers." Isabel Lucas, Público
"An extremely rare event: a book capable of creating its own form, inventing on the way a new literary genre." José Mário Silva, Expresso
"One of the best books ever written about the meaning of life’s end." Ana Dias Ferreira, Time Out Lisbon
"Susana Moreira Marques has written a book you cannot categorise." José Riço Direitinho, Revista Ler
“To read Now and at the hour of our death is to better recognise the glitzy clichés and ragged euphemisms with which we dress up our mortality, and when to value or discard them. It is to embrace the fact that we are not gods. It is to define a good death. It is to 'know you are a machine and not feel saddened but, rather, liberated by the thought'. It is to travel to the land of malady, and back again.” Laura Garmeson, 3AM magazine
“A beautifully crafted, powerful meditation on the nature of existence” Booktrust
"A slim volume with not a syllable wasted." Akanos
“Some of the individual aphorisms wonderfully encapsulate the sense of lost control that death brings, and the relief of getting back to the basics of breath and beauty” Rebecca Foster, Nudge
“The amount to which Moreira Marques manages to get these strangers to open up to her is remarkable.” Kate Gardner, For Books’ Sake
“Susana Moreira Marques’s unique and quietly devastating book follows death as it goes about its grim work in the rugged and isolated wine growing region of Planalto Mirandês, Trás-os-Montes, in the north eastern corner of Portugal.” Julian Hanna, Minor Literatures
“For Moreira Marques, what divinity there is can be found only in the quiet beauty that would otherwise go unnoticed, in that artist’s refuge, the details.” Alex Kalamaroff, Entropy Magazine
“An intriguing work of non-fiction, Marques takes a fresh look at death through the eyes of a palliative care team . . . With great compassion she listens to those facing death and recounts their stories in their own words.” Big Issue North
“The writing is compassionate but unsentimental, taking in the bodily indignities of death alongside the beauty of the landscape and a vanishing way of life. The fragmentary structure lends an air of visceral realism, but also a slightly unsatisfactory, unfinished feel. Still, this is a powerful, harrowing book that would repay a second reading – if one could bear it.” The Lady
“This is book which stares death in the face and doesn’t flinch. There is no attempt to make it meaningful, or raise it beyond the often painful, and sometimes prolonged, process it is. Marques’ journey is perhaps one we should all be prepared to take.” 1streading’s Blog
