Evening Book

"Evening" is the internal monologue of Ann Grant (or Katz,or Stackpole, or Lord depending on what part of her life she is reflecting upon), as she lies in bed, dying of cancer. Ann pours over her life, re-living it, telling herself the story of her most intimate and important moment(s). Her reflections are filled with deep pain, regret, and intensely burning passion.
Reading this book felt in some ways like finding out that there is no Santa Claus.
The idea of dying being a reflective process where you peacefully come to terms with your life and reach a place of profound resolution, which allows you to gracefully "let go" is such a standard and universal convention in depictions of death that on some level I really and truly believed in it.
Reading this achingly beautiful depiction of a dying woman consumed with the horrible pain of regret and unrequited love, obsessed in her last moments with paths not taken and incredible depths of raw emotion that will never be shared, makes that more hopeful view of death seem magical, comforting, and nice, but also unrealistic and naive. It's the death we want desperately to believe in, but that feels a little too neat when examined more closely. (It is, regretably, a lot easier to picture Mom and Dad wrapping the presents and setting them up under the tree, then to truly conceptualize how a jolly bearded fellow might manage the task of flying all over the world in his magical sleigh and delivering them via chimney.)
Maybe it is easier to leave life behind if your final moments are spent dwelling on your most profound losses, deepest disapointments, and overwhelming physical and emotional pain. Maybe the meaninglessness of it all is what we will be thinking about at the end:
"The ceiling was frowning. It said no one knows what life is for, no one knows what anything means, the plaster soft and uneven, the lines as thin as the cracks in one's palm, it said that silence wipes everything out."
Or maybe, (if we want to take something positive from the book) we should take in and work against this view of dying by living our lives led by our passion, by speaking our minds, and telling our stories.

The super-WASP world that Ann lives in was, for me anyway, at times a little distracting because it was easy to roll my eyes at the stereotypical elements of the scene, in part because I didn't always want to be pierced by the pain each page seemed determined to drive into my heart, and in part because it seemed like it could be the dramatic counterpoint to the wedding that Vince Vaughan and Owen Wilson attend in Wedding Crashers. (They would be SAILING wouldn't they? And she wore PEARLS, did she? More cocktails?!!!... and what the heck is a HIGHBALL anyway?)

That minor (and possibly unique to me) irritation aside, the writing is incredible. It manages to be lucid and sharp-- I felt pin-pricks of recognition and deep pain on page after page-- while truly existing as the mind of a woman meandering through her life in a morphine-induced haze. It is beautifully sad. It paints a devastating picture of potential not lived up to, thoughts not shared, and love left behind for responsibility and respectability. It left me shaken and a little paralyzed. And it also left me aching to truly live.