A review by lilianapeace
In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss, by Amy Bloom
3.0
3.5
This should be a sit down and read all the way through book. I didn’t do it justice by listening to it because I kept coming back to it which I think disrupted the flow. It moves back and forth in time from her husband’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s to their time at Dignitas which is why I think it’d be best to read it all in one go rather than piece it all together several times. As much as it is about death/the right to die and disease, this memoir is also a lot about privilege — it costs 10k to go to Dignitas (assisted suicide in Switzerland), like that’s their fee, let alone the tedious, sometimes toeing impossible, tasks you have to do in order to secure a spot there (which is to say only the rich actually can afford the right to die). Bloom is very honest about their situation though and made it very clear where they stood in terms of privilege and money/class. Still some parts made me go.. huh. Other times it was devastating. I didn’t cry, but I think it was because I was more focused on the process of assisted suicide than I was on their love story (Bloom is the wife who wrote/tells her husband’s/their story).
This should be a sit down and read all the way through book. I didn’t do it justice by listening to it because I kept coming back to it which I think disrupted the flow. It moves back and forth in time from her husband’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s to their time at Dignitas which is why I think it’d be best to read it all in one go rather than piece it all together several times. As much as it is about death/the right to die and disease, this memoir is also a lot about privilege — it costs 10k to go to Dignitas (assisted suicide in Switzerland), like that’s their fee, let alone the tedious, sometimes toeing impossible, tasks you have to do in order to secure a spot there (which is to say only the rich actually can afford the right to die). Bloom is very honest about their situation though and made it very clear where they stood in terms of privilege and money/class. Still some parts made me go.. huh. Other times it was devastating. I didn’t cry, but I think it was because I was more focused on the process of assisted suicide than I was on their love story (Bloom is the wife who wrote/tells her husband’s/their story).