This is not a book that you enjoy reading in the conventional meaning of the word, but by the same token it isn't a tear-jerker either notwithstanding the fact that the author, ten years after diagnosis, was writing in the terminal stages of cancer. There is an emotional element but not sadness as such - the book is more clear-headed, more purposeful than that.

The book opens with her having illegally acquired a euthanasia drug from China. The first part of the book is a lucid , beautifully written analysis of her predicament. Cory Taylor's aim is to take away the taboo about talking about death: "For so many of us, death has become the unmentionable thing, a monstrous silence. This is of no help to the dying, who are probably lonelier now than they've ever been." I saw that with both my parents when they were dying of cancer - we all try to be positive during treatment but once treatment stopped working, and I found it very difficult to have the kind of conversation that I knew was needed but for which I had no words. I think that the author has given me some pointers.

She queries also the morality of subsidising expensive drugs of limited efficacy in attempts to prolong life when the finds might be put to better use elsewhere. She considers the alternatives to a slow death - a very rational desire for a "good" death, the potential for assisted dying. She muses on whether people with religious sensibilities obstruct the wish for a "good death" by non-believers who would prefer to die at a time of their choosing when faced with an otherwise painful or lingering death. She is not so much scared of dying, as of dying badly. The palliative care services might also wish to consider her words - it is not just about controlling pain, but allowing the patient to have control. The author cannot help but think about the deaths of those close to her. One of her support workers helping her prepare a memoir of her life dies suddenly of a massive stroke, unprepared for death. The author's mother died in a nursing home ("a place of such unremitting despair"), lost to Alzheimers "I saw the ravages she suffered, he pain and humiliation, the loss of independence and reason". I found this all very thought-provoking, something to be discussed with family.

The central section of the book looks back at the author's family, riven with fractured relationships. Her parent's tempestuous relationship, her father's constant restlessness, resulted in what can fairly be described as dysfunctional family relationships. I found this part comforting too, reflecting the probably quite common families where issues are swept under the carpet, social visits descend into arguments and siblings are distant from each other, especially after parental deaths. Alongside the family history there is the issue of where one belongs, what this means. In the final section, the author looks back on her peripatetic childhood and how the impetus to write developed in her. She reviews her earlier life all over Australia, in Fiji & Kenya, from the vantage point of two rooms in her home, limited by her declining health.

Earlier in the book she quotes a psychotherapist that "we are all haunted by the life not lived": she does not have a bucket lit because "it comforts me to remember the things I have done, rather than hanker after the things I haven't done." One of the things she has done is leave us this valuable book to help us all when we face our own demise.

I received a free digital advance review copy of this book via NetGalley.