Love's Work

“You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself”.

Originally published in 1995, this heartbreaking and yet somewhat hopeful memoir is Gillian Rose’s testament to a life lived chasing the truth. A university professor and a philosopher, Rose goes back to her difficult, Jewish childhood as a dyslexic girl torn between a thorny relationship with her biological father and the affectionate one with her stepfather. Moving on through her life, she recounts her relationships with friends and lovers and, only halfway through the book, she admits to her being sick with terminal ovarian cancer in her 40s. The writing cuts like a knife, and there is so much to unpack in this book: life and death, writing as vocation and salvation, religion (chosen and imposed), the importance of one’s own name (the “Stone” and the “Rose”), loss, and so much more. The author’s philosophical background certainly informs the prose, but her style still manages to be easily readable and full of memorable passages. It’s such an important book, despite its being a slim volume, and I’m glad Penguin decided to give it a new life in this new, beautiful edition.

“I am always compelled to write, in sickness and in health: for, otherwise, I die deadly, but this way, by this work, I may die forward into the intensified agon of living”.

•thanks to #netgalley for the #arc in exchange for an honest review*

This is the kind of memoir I love. It's strange, fragmentary and at times difficult. It strives to capture the essence of Gillian Rose but also the difficulty of being and the strangeness of the need to put down on paper who you are. It flits across times and people and memories, sometimes stringing them together, sometimes hinting at things that Rose may have been reaching for but not able or willing to explore fully. It's tender, angry and sometimes bewildering. I can't say I always enjoyed it, but it kept me coming back for more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press UK for providing me with a digital ARC. The Modern Classics series is one I have a deep attachment to, so this was a tiny dream come true.

This is a very unorthodox memoir. People love making stories of themselves, and all we've learned are stories that have clear beginnings, arcs, and endings. You know, start out with your childhood, reflect at the end, and all that sort of jazz.
But this is not a story of regularity. In this memoir, life is but a flash in the pan – there are a few critical moments, some very tiny slices of life that truly matter, and a subsequent meditation on said slices.
While I wasn't there completely in the beginning, I was wholeheartedly committed to the work upon reading about the cancer diagnosis. To Love's Work.
I'm glad I got to read this. And you will be too.