Most of the grief-lit that I read is nonfiction (either memoir or academic texts about grief). Lots of fiction that I read has elements of grief but rarely is it the main theme – I tend to avoid these because I fear there will be something that doesn’t ring true, which then colours my opinion of the entire book (probably unfairly).

So with that said, why did I pick up Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer? I was intrigued by the blurb that alluded to a ‘surprising’ end-of-life request.

I avoid spoilers at all cost, so I won’t reveal what the ‘surprising request’ was. However, I can say that the story is focused on Eliot, who is caring for Claire, his wife of forty years. Claire is dying from cancer and the story opens when she has just months left to live. Eliot is managing her pain, organising medical appointments, and facilitating family and friends visiting – he gets a little lost in the chaos, questioning his role and capacity, and simply accepting his ‘…ordinary misery. Ordinary desolation…’.

There were aspects of this novel that I found very interesting, particularly that it is written from the perspective of a care-giver. It covered issues common to care-givers – anticipatory grief; feelings of being overlooked or taken for granted; the weight of expectation; and the assumption that they are ‘coping’ (often because they have been care-giving for a long period of time).

…no one would have complimented a wife in the same way. A wife was expected to be a caretaker. For a husband, doing the work was the same as being amazing at it.

However, the story didn’t move me in the way that I was anticipating. The inclusion of strange details – such as the in-depth analysis of Eliot’s cooking methods, and a lengthy description of a meeting with an ex-colleague – broke the rhythm of the text. Perhaps this was intentional to show that Eliot, in order to cope with overwhelming feelings, had to dissociate from what was happening with Claire and instead turn his attention to making scones!

Ultimately, Eliot comes across as confused and emotionally immature, and realises that he has no sense of power in difficult family circumstances.

Eliot was pierced by the notion that for his entire married life he had pretended to agree when actually what he did, what he always did, was concede.

While some readers might feel empathy for him, I was caught on a broader theme – middle-aged men whose wives have done everything to keep their family life, household, and social connections going, and that without the wife, they flounder (in fairness to Eliot, he was part of a monthly ‘dinner club’, where a group of men practiced cooking technical dishes, however, the club came about because Claire had initiated it). After a tense conversation with son Josh, Eliot thinks –

Claire was so good at handling this kind of thing. So good at letting what felt fraught to Eliot unfold slowly – and become, in the process, less fraught.

I suspect this was because Claire listened, and didn’t insert herself in every situation, or try to problem-solve! But it did leave me thinking about scenarios such as this – husband reliant on wife for managing all aspects of life. Whose responsibility it is to change it that set-up (let’s face it, the wife gets something out of such a set-up as well)?

3/5

“People say they’ll miss springtime. Or their dog, or mint chip ice cream. They’ll miss lying in a hammock with a book… Missing things,” she said emphatically, “is an activity undertaken by the living.”