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Mercy Papers (2009)

by Robin Romm(Favorite Author)

3.7 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1416567992 (ISBN13: 9781416567998)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing

review 1: I finished The Mercy Papers in a day, but this 200 page book packs a mighty punch. A memoir written by Robin Romm during the last three weeks of her mother’s 9 year battle with cancer, it left me with what felt like an 80 pound brick on my chest. I couldn’t help but cry with Romm as she described the process of her grief – which, during this book, stayed mostly in the anger stage. Desperate to keep her mother with her at any cost, she makes pacts with God, tells her mother she can’t die because she needs her. Grief is a funny thing and it belongs to no one but the one who possesses it. In some ways, I was reminded of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, because Romm used a lot from journals she kept during the last days of her mother’s life. She pulls he... morer readers in and holds them there, unflinchingly, unapologetic until the end. I am glad it was only 200 pages because I don’t think I could’ve taken any more heartbreak.
review 2: This was a harder memoir to read. It deals with the three weeks before the death of her mother. I thought it did a good job portraying the raw emotions of such an experience, but I also found it quite saddening that the author had no beliefs of an afterlife...no hope of seeing her mother again, no reassurance that her mother was "going to a better place" without the struggle of cancer. I found myself thinking how grateful I am to have that hope, that reassurance to sustain me in these hard trials of mortality. less

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