31318253In this emotionally gripping, genre-defying novella from Sarah Pinborough, a woman sits at her father’s bedside, watching the clock tick away the last hours of his life. Her brothers and sisters–she is the middle child of five–have all turned up over the past week to pay their last respects. Each is traumatized in his or her own way, and the bonds that unite them to each other are fragile–as fragile perhaps as the old man’s health.

With her siblings all gone, back to their self-obsessed lives, she is now alone with the faltering wreck of her father’s cancer-ridden body. It is always at times like this when it–the dark and nameless, the impossible, presence that lingers along the fringes of the dark fields beyond the house–comes calling.

As the clock ticks away in the darkness, she can only wait for it to find her, a reunion she both dreads and aches for…

One of the most harrowing reads I’ve come across, The Language of Dying is not only about a father slowly succumbing to cancer but about more than one or even two kinds of hurt people endure during their lives. Less than 200 pages of stillness right in front of Death’s door, of reliving past losses, and witnessing the very fragile ties in between the 5 siblings which will surely crumble and fade in the same way as their father’s life.

The Language of Dying gives a sobering look into how everyone deals with hardships differently, what their coping mechanisms are and how it affects people around them. It’s a crux of human relationships, isn’t it? The way someone expects others to behave doesn’t necessarily fit into the other person’s logical behavioral agenda.

The family still remembers the night decades ago when a mother and a wife walked out on them. A father left to take care of 5 children on his own… That age old pain has now been buried underneath new fresh hardships that come hand in hand with adult life. Some of those hardships are known in between siblings, some of those have never been spoken about… Everyone carries some kind of secrets… The brothers and sisters coming together in their childhood home, as their father lives out his last remaining days, nearly gives reader some hope… That they will pull together, that they will support each other and that they can understand each other… But, family or not, sometimes the physical and mental distances in between siblings has done too much damage to reconcile…

The writing in this book is absolutely beautiful, however morbid it sounds. A difficult read which leaves the questions about life and death hanging in the ether. It seems like it has been nothing but a long string of misery for every character in this book and yet… life goes on. To some of them at least. So, a word of warning here– you will finish the book and most likely feel like your heart and soul are being weighed down as if by all of the world’s hurt. The ending will not give you peace, serenity nor closure… It truly is a book of hurt. A book of hurtful reality. A book of pain and just wanting to be free, in peace. 

There is an interesting element to the novella. Fantasy? Magical realism? During the three breaking points of our main character’s life, a big black beast of a unicorn appears in front of her childhood home. With glowing red eyes and vibrating energy this beast seems to bring something to the woman. Is it closure? Is it death come to announce that another life is taken, or that another piece of her soul is gone? I would like for the ‘beast’ to represent her strength at times she most needed to find something in her… in the end though? I started to think maybe it was madness all along…

My rating: 4 stars… The ending was left a bit too open for me. I’d like to be spoonfed here with whether I was left with madness and lunacy or death upon death? Then again… that ending will keep me thinking about the book for a long, long time…

*I received a copy of this book through Netgalley and Quercus Books in exchange for a review*

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