For most, the time period doula is related to the method of childbirth and bringing new life into the world. However, starting within the early 2000s, the dying doula started to realize consideration inside American fashionable data. These people carry out the same operate to their birthing counterparts however as a substitute give attention to ushering folks by means of the dying course of and offering end-of-life assist. Mikki Brammer’s mild and uplifting debut novel, The Collected Regrets of Clover, takes readers into the fascinating world of one significantly memorable dying doula and serves as a potent reminder that the key to a lovely dying is to reside a lovely life.
Clover Brooks has all the time had an affinity for dying, having misplaced each her dad and mom on the age of 6 and later deciding to pursue a graduate diploma in thanatology, the scientific examine of dying and dying. When her beloved grandfather dies, Clover decides to pay tribute to him by working as a dying doula to supply companionship to others throughout their ultimate days.
Part of Clover’s job entails recording her purchasers’ ultimate phrases, which she catalogs in a single of three personal notebooks: Regrets, Advice or Confessions. Most folks’s dying revelations are likely to fall into the Regrets class, and if Clover have been trustworthy with herself, she has greater than sufficient regrets to fill a complete pocket book on her personal. Perhaps her greatest is that she has spent a lot time honoring the lives of others that she has forgotten the way to reside her personal life to the fullest.
All this adjustments when she kinds an surprising connection along with her newest shopper, an indomitable girl named Claudia. Clover finds herself on a cross-country journey with Claudia’s grandson, trying to find Claudia’s secret misplaced love. Along the best way, Clover questions whether or not she has the braveness to really begin dwelling on her personal phrases and start whittling down her stack of regrets whereas she nonetheless has the prospect.
Like all the perfect fiction that facilities on dying, The Collected Regrets of Clover evokes its readers to ask, within the spirit of Mary Oliver, “What is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” Although not delicate in its messaging, Brammer’s novel is a comforting exploration of grief, love and human connection that’s certain to attraction to followers of books that really feel like a heat hug, like The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman and Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes.
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