Cory Taylor

"Bracing and beautiful . . . Every human should read it." —The New York Times A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and 2017 Critics' Pick. One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2017. At the age of sixty, Cory Taylor is dying of melanoma-related brain cancer. Her illness is no longer treatable: she now weighs less than her neighbor's retriever. As her body weakens, she describes the experience—the vulnerability and strength, the courage and humility, the anger and acceptance—of knowing she will soon die. Written in the space of a few weeks, in a tremendous creative surge, this powerful and beautiful memoir is a clear-eyed account of what dying teaches: Taylor describes the tangle of her feelings, remembers the lives and deaths of her parents, and examines why she would like to be able to choose the circumstances of her death. Taylor's last words offer a vocabulary for readers to speak about the most difficult thing any of us will face. And while Dying: A Memoir is a deeply affecting meditation on death, it is also a funny and wise tribute to life.

Looking back, Martha could’ve said no when Mr. Booker first tried to kiss her. That would’ve been the sensible thing to do. But Martha’s sixteen, she lives in a small dull town—a cemetery with lights—her father’s mad, her home’s stifling and she’s waiting for the rest of her life to begin. Of course Martha would kiss the charming Englishman who brightened her world with style, adventure, whisky, cigarettes and the promise of sex. But Martha didn’t count on the consequences. Me and Mr. Booker is a story about feeling old whenyou’re young and acting young when you’re not.

I was blinded by his beauty. In the one or two photographs I’ve kept of him I can still see it. He stares out of them almost miserably, as if his loveliness is an affliction. Not that I saw it that way, at least not in the beginning. In the beginning I thought it was a kind of miracle.Arthur Wheeler is haunted by his infatuation with a Japanese youth he encountered in the enemy alien camp where he worked as a guard during WW2. Abandoning his wife and baby son, Arthur sets out on a doomed mission to rescue his lover from forced deportation back to Japan, a country in ruins.Thus begins the secret history of a soldier at war with his own sexuality and dangerously at odds with the racism that underpins the crumbling British Empire.Four decades later Arthur is still obsessed with the traumatic events of his youth. He proposes a last reunion with his lost lover, in the hope of laying his ghosts to rest, but this mission too seems doomed to failure.Like Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and Snow Falling On Cedars, My Beautiful Enemy explores questions of desire and redemption against the background of a savage racial war. In this context, Arthur’s private battles against his own nature, and against the conventions of his time, can only end in heartache.

2015 erfährt Cory Taylor, dass sie nicht mehr lange zu leben hat. In nur wenigen Wochen hat sie ihre Memoiren verfasst, die kurz vor ihrem Tod im Juli 2016 erschienen. Auf bemerkenswerte Weise reflektiert sie über den Sinn der Zeit, die ihr noch bleibt. Sie lässt uns teilhaben an ihrer Erfahrung, was das Sterben sie gelehrt hat. Der universellen Frage über ein Leben nach dem Tod begegnet sie als nicht-religiöser Mensch in einer für sie selbst überraschenden spirituellen Form. Ergreifend und zutiefst weise sind ihre Gedanken über das Sterben, die zugleich eine Hymne an das Leben sind.

This book has the following

This book has the following

This book has the following

This book has the following

This book has the following

This book has the following