Anjali Kukreja Kukreja itibaren حي عاصم، Umman
This could easily be a 4 star. Keeps you reading as this author usually does. I liked the current news tie in. Not sure I was that happy with the way the foster parents were handled.
I thoroughly enjoyed this well thought through plot and was totally engaged by the characters. Rosamund Lipton is not an author I'd read before but I finished this late last night and bought another of hers today. I don't know what I believe about life after death but I believe there is something so it was easy for me to go with a plot where the narration is done by someone between those two states and observing the goings on around the hospital. If you're a non-believer and can't suspend belief you will, I suspect, find the book irritating at best. There were tears on more than one occasion during the reading of this but the ending had me sobbing.
This short memoir is breathtaking. It's as tragic as it is lucid and at moments, even comical. What is truly amazing is how aware and sharp-witted Brodkey remains as his body slowly deteriorates. Favorite quote: "Living with AIDS is like being a character stuck in a bad John Updike novel."