Absolutely Delicious: A Chronicle of Extraordinary Dying
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Absolutely Delicious: A Chronicle of Extraordinary Dying

Absolutely Delicious: A Chronicle of Extraordinary Dying

By
Alison Jean Lester (Author) Mary Ann Frye (Illustrator)  

Paperback

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After a life marbled with exploration, academia, and domesticity, the writer Valerie Lester retired to a residential hospice and set about enjoying the final act of her life. Yes. Enjoying. She knew just where she wanted to be, with whom, doing what, and she communicated this to her family and friends with clarity and consistency. She died nine weeks later, having engaged in dying with equanimity, curiosity, and even amusement. Absolutely Delicious: A Chronicle of Extraordinary Dying describes the months novelist Alison Jean Lester spent with her mother. Motivated to write the book because of how her mother faced the fact that her cancer was terminal, and how she chose to approach the end of her life with the same positive energy with which she had lived, Lester shares the emotional, medical, logistical and social aspects of this extraordinary experience. The book also includes a chapter on the death of her father, who faced his own terminal illness, ALS (motor neurone disease), with a similar rejection of extreme life-prolonging measures and with the desire to spend his final days in peace, nine years before. There is a chapter, too, on Lester's aunt, who died three months after her mother, having taken a very different approach to the idea, and the reality, of dying. Woven into the narrative are poems both by the author and her mother, as they shared the impulse to grapple with life's challenges through poetry. The book is interspersed with diverse, emotional illustrations by artist and graphic designer Mary Ann Frye. A good friend of both the author and her mother, Frye processed the death of her friend in drawings while the author was processing it in words. 26 black-and-white illustrations
Alison Jean Lester is the author of the novels 'Lillian on Life' and 'Yuki Means Happiness', and the short story collection 'Locked Out: Stories Far from Home'. She spent her early life in the US and the UK, and pursued her higher education in the US, China and Italy. She lived in Japan from 1991 to 1999, working as a freelance writer and voiceover artist, and giving birth to her two children. From 1999 to 2016 she lived in Singapore, where she ran her own communication skills training and coaching business. She now lives in England.
  • Contributor: Alison Jean Lester
  • Imprint: Bench Press
  • ISBN13: 9781838112400
  • Format: Paperback
  • Publisher: Bench Press
  • Release Date: 2020-10-22
  • Binding: Paperback / softback
  • Biography: Alison Jean Lester is the author of the novels 'Lillian on Life' and 'Yuki Means Happiness', and the short story collection 'Locked Out: Stories Far from Home'. She spent her early life in the US and the UK, and pursued her higher education in the US, China and Italy. She lived in Japan from 1991 to 1999, working as a freelance writer and voiceover artist, and giving birth to her two children. From 1999 to 2016 she lived in Singapore, where she ran her own communication skills training and coaching business. She now lives in England.

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