⭐️⭐️ I struggled with this book. I think I was expecting more as I had recent read some of the author’s previous books. So my fault not hers!

It is a short book but I found it a tad drawn out and overly descriptive.

This is a short but beautiful novella by Sarah Pinsborough that explores a family’s grief as they come together to deal with the impending death of their terminally ill father.

This was really beautiful story and one that manages to weave dark, almost horresque themes with a little bit of fae magic, as well as a lot of normal relatable experiences in family life like strained relationships, love for siblings, addictions, mental health issues. It had everything and through the whole story, there was a beautiful truth about death. It didn’t hide away the hard bits about caring for a dying loved one, and the uncomfortable moments.

The Language of Dying

I absolutely loved Behind Her Eyes (#wtfthatending!) so couldn't wait to get my hands on this book!

The Language of Dying takes us on a beautifully emotional journey as a woman cares for her father in the last few days and hours of his fight against cancer. It's not a long book but it's atmospheric, beautiful and makes a highly emotional impact on the reader. Four shiny stars from purplebookstand.

Beautiful, honest, raw, and utterly heartbreaking.

I've lost all my grandparents - two while I was still quite young and two when I was just out of high school. The latter two, I watched as their time dried up. One I saw take last breaths. The other, I saw with terminal agitation (though it wasn't until this book I had a name to put to it) and later, as I was on my way home from the hospital on a crowded train, I got word the end had come. Both slipped away, and none of it was easy.

This book was... very real. Painful. It reminded me of what I went through with my grandparents, the extended version of which my parents must have been dealing with. The family drama. The wishes for it to be over (and the wishes for it to never be over). The repeated phrase - "I just want to die" - that wasn't supposed to be heard by me or my brother, in the months leading up to the end. The lack of that phrase in the other instance, the life and passion suddenly taken, identity ripped away.

The end is always sudden, whether you've been waiting for it for a short or a long time. And it's always painful, even when it's a relief. This book explores all that and more, in a very real and raw way.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

3,5 stars

5 siblings are coming home to spend the final moments with their father when he is dying. The unnamed narrator is the middle child who stayed home to care for his father after his diagnosis with cancer. When she informs her siblings that their father has mere days left, they finally come back home when they can no longer postpone it. They all have their own ways coping and it causes drifts between them.

The story bounces between past and present while we follow narrator’s relationship with her father and her siblings. We learn how the family slowly drifted apart after their mother left them.

I didn’t get the magical aspects of the story. When she was a child she saw something. And she sees it again as an adult. Was it real or was she just imagining it? Was it supposed to have some bigger meaning? I don’t get it.

Despite that, I really liked this. It’s short book, more like a novella, and while sad I had to know what happens next.

The Language of Dying was one of those books that has lingered and which I have a feeling will leave a mark behind it. It is in essence a monologue, a stream of conscious through the eyes of a woman who is watching her father die. She goes about her day, sits by her father's bedside, all the while knowing what it is in store. Her brothers and sister return to the family home to make their farewells, but the family bonds long frayed fail to reach her. And it is when she is alone that it always comes, if it comes at all. An extraordinary novella, slight and to the point, The Language of Dying captures something agonisingly honest about the one human experience which unites us all.

From the very opening words, 'There is a language to dying', Pinborough charts the blank, everyday horror of being around someone you love as they prepare to leave you. The new words that creep in to your vocabulary, the chemical smells, even 'the rustle of the nurses' skirts as they rustle up and down our stairs.' When the narrator has to call in to work to explain that she cannot come in because her father is dying, she senses their shock at the other end of the line and silently acknowledges that they do not yet speak the language, so she has said too much.

The nameless woman who is putting a voice to all of this is something of a lost soul. She and her father have been living together since the breakdown of both their marriages. She remembers her chaotic childhood, her long-fled mother, her father's alcoholism and yet more than anything, her words for her father are full of love. Her siblings have returned to the family home, all of them nursing some form of sorrow. For eldest child Paul, life has been a series of failures and forced fresh beginnings. Penny has always tried to avoid the tougher side of life. The youngest pair, the twins, are both locked in a cycle of mental illness and addiction and none of their elder siblings are sure how they will react to this latest grief.

Having spent months watching her father's decline, the arrival of the others feels like an interruption to the woman. She even exchanges a glance with her father, now passed beyond speech, as the two of them appear to agree that things had been simpler when it was just them. Looking at one of her brothers, we feel the shudder as she wonders if she will even ever see him again after all of this. The loss of our roots, the fall of the tree from which they have sprung, it changes everything. Death does not unite them and their divisions only become clearer.

For me, the story recalled painfully the visit I had to my grandmother, little more than a week or so before her death. Watching someone you love going through such incredible physical suffering was a special agony that I had never encountered before. I was particularly caught by the narrator's horror when the nurse estimates that her father has another week to go - is he really going to have to keep going for that long? We think of death as hiding behind a corner, ready to swipe, not that it is something that will keep us waiting, not that it has to be earned through bitter toil.

The back story was a weaker portion of the story for me, particularly that of the narrator's failed marriage. The novella was capturing that particular claustrophobic intensity of observing the death of a loved one, so diluting that felt like a mistake. This was not a The Gathering, in many ways ancillary plot was unnecessary, but the bond between daughter and father was what mattered. The vignette in which the narrator recounted her father researching the best deals for his funeral and then visiting the crematorium to decide whether it was for him affected me far more. It reminded me of when a bed had been set up for my grandmother downstairs, and she pointed to the box that the new duvet had come in and remarked in a completely practical tone that it would be useful to us, afterwards, for packing.

The Language of Dying was incredibly atmospheric - although the events it describes are in so many ways recognisable, Pinborough's prose elevates her story to something else. The ultimate conclusion caught me completely off guard and the vision which had haunted the narrator throughout her life felt ambiguous - what exactly does it mean? Not quite full fantasy and yet not entirely rooted in the real world, The Language of Dying is a unique piece of work. I am always amazed and delighted to find a book that I can read and think, "Yes, me too! I thought I was the only one" and there were many moments of that here.

We are so often afraid to give words to death, to speak of what is coming, to share our bleakest experiences but yet Pinborough has created a masterpiece in miniature which speaks of these moments in life which one often shudders to look back on but manages to transform them into this very exhilarating read. Capturing grief in all of its pain and rage, The Language of Dying was always going to make me cry, but I feel so grateful to have read it.

Normally I wouldn't recommend reading something so tragic and painful as the slow demise of a Father (and in some respects of a family itself) in public. However there were several moments during the reading of The Language of Dying in which I was blissfully relieved that the pressures of being in public view were there - to stop me from falling apart altogether and bursting into tears.

This isn't an easy read. The slow and agonizing degeneration of the Father, told with brutal honesty, was starkly portrayed. It's difficult not to get completely caught up in the horror of it all - letting your mind wander over terrible images and the thought of the finite nature of our time in this world. Perhaps this is what also made this book a kind of morbid beauty - decaying and yet doing so with a wincing kind of elegance.

Death is the tie that binds them and yet there is more to The Language of Dying than that - a family of five very different siblings are brought together not only to face the imminent loss of their parent but also to confront once again the startling dissimilarities among themselves. Pinborough writes the brothers and sisters as if they were a shattered mirror - once part of a whole but now nothing but a pile of jagged, ill fitting pieces.

This is only for the brave. But if you can screw your courage to the sticking place then this is definitely a worthy read.

This is my second book for Sarah and must say it never disappoints the reader. Although it was very hard reading it.
To watch someone you love slipping away slowly in front of your eyes and you can't do anything for them to reduce the pain and suffering. Remembering your life together, through thick and thin. Reliving the moments day after day. It's crushing you.
The narrator who her name remained anonymous takes us through the pages of the book to her life, her relationship with her siblings and how she sees them, how their choices affected her. Her mother leaving them when they were chlidren, her marriage who lead her to go back home to care for her sick father.
Sarah addressed a very important issues in the book, from mothers abandoning her children, drugs addiction and the effect on eveyones life, abusing and low self-esteem, losing a loved one to sickness and many more, makes you relate to the book in many ways.
I highly recommend the book, but a fair warning that it will in print on you deeply.