Book Review: The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough

The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough

Genre: (Fantasy)
Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books
Publication Date: December 5, 2013
Author’s Info: sarahpinborough.com

From the moment this book arrived in my mailbox, I knew I was in for something very special.

There is a tiny thread that binds this book to the fantasy genre, but otherwise, it is firmly ground in the harrowing reality of death, the pain of love and loss, and the struggles of family. It is told in the first person by the middle daughter of a man dying of cancer – and it is told directly to you, the reader, as she speaks to her father. Recollections of events in the past are told in the same present tense as current events, leaving raw, open wounds as her train of thought flows through these traumatic experiences.

This is not a long book, yet it took me a very long time to read it because it is not an easy book. Anyone who has watched a loved one wither away to disease will break to this book, if they are able to read it at all. Anyone who has not had such an experience will come to understand. But death is not just about dying, it is an opportunity to deal with the living and the lived, which Pinborough carefully unpacks through the narrator and her interactions with siblings. But ultimately, in the language of dying there are no happy endings.