Passing: A Memoir of Love and Death

by Michael Korda

Overview

In the tradition of The Year of Magical Thinking comes a legendary editor’s unflinching love song about his radiant wife, Margaret, and her battle with cancer.

It was a warm April in Pleasant Valley when Margaret Korda, normally a fearless horsewoman, dropped her horsewhip while she was riding. Such a mild slip was easy to ignore, but when other troubling symptoms accumulated, she confided to her husband, “Michael, I think something serious is wrong with me.” Within a few rapid weeks, the fiercely independent, former fashion model was diagnosed with brain cancer, while Michael, once reliant on her steeliness, became her caregiver, deciphering bewildering medical reports and packing her beloved toiletries for the hospital. An operation performed by a renowned surgeon allowed Margaret to ride her favorite competition horse Logan go Bragh a few more times, but Margaret’s tumors quickly returned—leaving her to grapple with the reality of impending death. In rapturous prose, Korda, a modern- day Orpheus, braids her heroic story with heartrending details of their final year together. Passing, a tender memoir, is a testament to the transcendent possibilities of love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631494659
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	10/08/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	826,376
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Michael Korda participated in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary. He is the author of major biographies of Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Robert E. Lee., as well as the best-selling memoir Charmed Lives.

Editorial Reviews

★ 09/23/2019

Novelist and former Simon & Schuster editor-in-chief Korda (Clouds of Glory) delivers a heartfelt look at his wife, Margaret, who was diagnosed with brain cancer a year before she died at age 79. This intimate memoir is both a tribute to their 45-year marriage—during which they had been “each other’s lover, companion, and best friend”—and an account of how looking “after someone who is dying gradually fills one’s life to the exclusion of everything else” with “no manual that tells you what to do, what to expect, what to tell the person who’s dying.” Korda’s account of Margaret’s medical treatments—surgery, radiation, and rehabilitation—is made all the more striking as he details her lifetime of physical fitness, including riding horses competitively (and winning five national championships). He sensitively describes how Margaret’s “present was becoming unbearable at a quickening rate” though he concludes that in the end her eyes showed not resignation but “perhaps even gratitude” that “the struggle was coming to an end.” Lovingly told, Korda’s memoir movingly captures the complexities of dealing with the death of a loved one. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"In this harrowing, engrossing, meticulous account of his wife’s deterioration from cancer, Michael Korda presents both the medical and the psychic details of dying. His writing is disciplined and unsentimental, but deeply evocative and ultimately very generous. He opens the private world of the extremely private woman to whom he was married, fully capturing her spirit, their marriage, and her untimely demise."

Andrew Solomon

"Passing, the story of a woman stricken with cancer and the husband who loved her, is an unforgettable tribute to the raw emotions that evolve from shock to acceptance."

Mary Higgins Clark

"This harrowing account of Margaret Korda’s death is also a deeply moving testimonial to the beauty and strength of a remarkable marriage. I am grateful to Michael for this honest and painful book that cannot have been easy to write."

Robert Gottlieb

"Anyone who has ever cared for a loved one at the end of life will identify with Korda’s escalating feelings of despair and uselessness as he tries to save his wife from a disease with no rescue. His book, and his life, illustrate the essential truth that no matter our circumstances, we will one day die. His unsparing account nudges us to reconsider life’s trivial grievances until we do."

Connie Schultz

"Michael Korda’s Passing is a singular account of his wife’s gallant battle against a relentless cancer and a description of that tragic journey. T.S. Eliot wrote, ‘In my end is my beginning... Or let us hope.'

"

Larry McMurtry

"Written in plain, straightforward prose, Passing is the memoir of a man who stuffs himself with facts and information about brain tumors and cancer in hopes that knowledge will help him get through the anguish of watching his beautiful wife die.... Korda’s book keeps you reading because of the graceful, understated way he conveys his anguish, his love and his admiration for his spirited wife.... Passing is a moving book."

Laurie Hertzel

2019-07-15
A devoted husband bears witness to his wife's final illness.

Retired Simon & Schuster editor-in-chief Korda (Alone: Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk: Defeat Into Victory, 2017, etc.) offers a sensitive and absorbing chronicle of his wife's death from cancer a year after she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Joining a growing genre about death and dying that includes Sherwin Nuland's How We Die and Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, Korda's memoir is both a celebration of his 45-year marriage to his "lover, companion, and best friend" and a cleareyed account of the benefits and limits of medical intervention. Until she was stricken with brain cancer, Margaret Korda seemed invulnerable: a strong, athletic woman who loved the outdoors, rode horses competitively to win five national championships, and, even at the age of 79, retained the beauty and "perfect posture of the fashion model she once had been." Yet although she was remarkably healthy, the author discloses that she took an assortment of medications to treat depression and anxiety. "She was a perfectionist," he writes, "hard on herself, she worried about aging, losing her looks, what she would do with herself if she had to give up riding." Her fears made her wary of doctors, which is why, when she noticed a patch on her cheek, she covered it with makeup rather than have it removed and biopsied. By the time she agreed to remove it, the cancer had begun to spread. After the diagnosis of her brain tumor, Korda took it upon himself to find out as much as he could about the illness and treatment, devouring cancer sites on the internet and parsing medical information, hoping it would help him support Margaret's treatment. Despite finding an excellent, caring neurosurgeon, the author "struggled with alarm and despondency as I read about what lay in store for Margaret." He chronicles in detail her yearlong experience of surgeries, therapy, decline, and decision-making as the two learned the extent of her illness and, finally, abandoned "hope, illusions, [and] faith in miracles."

A compassionate chronicle of a couple's last year.

Kirkus Reviews