Shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize

Dying: A Memoir – Cory Taylor

Nonfiction · Text Publishing

Dying: A Memoir

About the book

“In Dying: A Memoir, Taylor has made the concept of dying bearable, and given us something life-affirming.

– 2017 Stella Prize Judges

About the author


Cory Taylor

Further Reading


 

“What is the best that we can realistically hope for, at the end? If you subscribe to an organised religion, you might focus on living virtuously in the hope of a posthumous reward. The rest of us need to know how to go about dying with some dignity and grace, amid the grubby imperfection of the real world. The Australian writer Cory Taylor managed it, and she has left us her wisdom and experience in this book, which is part memoir, part critical examination of western society’s dysfunctional relationship with mortality.” Alice O’Keefe, Guardian Australia

“It takes courage to contemplate one’s death and extraordinary clarity and generosity to write about it like this. Dying: A memoir is a gift to us all, a book that is not afraid to navigate darkness and that sees us through to the end, to the ‘edge of words … to the place where they falter and strain in the face of dying’s terrifying finality’.” Rachel Robertson, Australian Book Review

“‘Things live until they die,’ she writes in this slim, intellectual memoir that serves as a reminder, amid the omnishambles of today’s world, that life is transient and death final. Her message is clear: Count. Your. Blessings.” Jackie Annesley, The Times

Judges’ report


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