This is not a review -

but it is about a book. I just finished reading Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists and there is a passage in this book that is absolutely brilliant.

It's very short and I fell in love with it. The problem is that it was very early in the book and I kept going back to it - nothing else in the book struck me as strongly as this little bit did and I think I might have to re-read the book, beginning the next time at p. 39 so I don't get distracted by this.

One of the characters, an elderly woman who is being interviewed, says:

"... You can't dread what you can't experience. The only death we experience is that of other people. ... I understood what death was at its worst: something that happens to other people. ... But my point, you see, is that death is misunderstood. The loss of one's life is not the greatest loss. It is no loss at all. To others, perhaps, but not to oneself. From one's own perspective, experience simply halts. From one's own perspective, there is no loss."

And this is true - at least it seems to be so for me. We may dread the process of dying, but death itself? Maybe not.

This passage absolutely blew me away. Brilliant.

Kate