In the Slender Margin: The Intimate Strangeness of Dying by Eve Joseph

In the Slender Margin: The Intimate Strangeness of Dying Reviews

• 
  George Ilsley

  An excellent poetic memoir that rambles and meanders and yet never wanders off a serene and scenic path. The path follows the reader, like a shadow, and the experience is entirely soulful.
  
  Beautifully done. Excellent, contemplative, resonant. The language is poetic and lyrical, and imparts a feeling of intimacy and spaciousness. This is a book I always recommend for those on an uncertain journey into strangeness.
• 
  Magdelanye

  Art is something that lies in the slender margins between the real and the unreal.
  p192
  
  Ej has written artfully of what she knows in this tender meditation on death and dying. The early tragic death of her brother and her immersion in another culture gave her a particular edge and she is blunt and delicate in describing her professional experience as care aid.
  
  We are most deeply asleep at the switch...when we fancy we control any switches at all. pp45
  
  We're terrified that no one really knows anything. It's hard to have a good death when one is in terror. pp42
  
  hope allows us to imagine a future. On the other hand, if we're not careful, if we're too focused upon what we want to happen, we can miss what is happening right in front of us. p50
  
  we often pray for some kind of divine intervention even when we're not sure what or whom we believe in. p73....apparently it works whether you believe in it or not p75
  
  In a society that encourages us to shy away from death, we had to learn to walk towards it. p103
  
  If there really is no getting around it, then a book like this is prerequisite
• 
  Molly

  Beautiful writing. This subject matter was right on time...
• 
  Connie

  In the Slender Margin is a kind of free-association memoir about the author's experiences as a hospice worker and her thoughts on how the living and the dying experience death. Interspersed throughout the book are quotes from poets and artists, stories about how other cultures have viewed and dealt with death, and interviews with those who deal with the bodies of the dead. If she raises more questions than she answers, this is only to be expected when writing of the mysterious topic of death.
• 
  Susan

  A tender, informative examination of death and dying. Eve Joseph brings to the topic the practical knowledge of her 20 years as a palliative social worker as well as the brilliant insight of a poet. Loved it.
• 
  Samantha

  so this is a book by a poet about her work with hospice patients and, therefore, death. I am a poet, I have been attracted to work with the dying or dead - though I haven't actually done any - and so I thought, yeah, cool, right up my alley.
  
  actually, I found it annoying. I guess I was expecting just a lot of cool stories and anecdotes, and there are some. there were some informative bits, like it takes 9 months (average) for an unembalmed body straight in the earth to decay to bones. but mostly she seemed to have little to actually say. her much older brother died when she was 11 and she realized decades later that her death work was a way to come to terms with that. that's about her only solid realization, to be honest. the rest of it is a bunch of poetic sounding questions, which, yes, I know, I know, life is often more questions than answers. but why write a book then? just write poems, or a novel. or, write a book, but not this book. a book with more structure. I mean, she did some interesting things - she ended up married for a while to a hereditary chief of the salish, a northwest coast tribe, and at one point does this ritual where you cook for the dead and then burn the food - a ritual her mother had a strong reaction to. I think I would have enjoyed the book more had the bones of it not been submerged - that ceremony doesn't seem to have more weight than any other anecdote she tells about strangers. let's hear more about your salish mother in law who thinks you trail a string of ghosts behind you and who recommends cleansing rituals to you. let's be more forthcoming about the weight of your brother's death in your life. not much of a personal death, because she didn't know him that well, but certainly one with a huge impact on her family. let's parallel that whole story more explicitly with the stories from hospice, instead of stirring it all together under chapters that just blur into each other, each seeming to be the same blend of personal musing, anecdotes, and random facts.
  
  and I do mean random facts. not just about death. random, and distracting, facts. "Unlike lion tamer Claude Beatty, who tamed his cats with a chair and a whip, we use our intellect to try to bargain with death, thinking we can make a deal, forgetting there is a wildness at the heart of it." I find this sentence incredibly annoying. first of all, there is no need to name a lion tamer. if you've seen a cartoon with lion taming in it, you've seen whips and chairs. it's the stereotype. but more than that, why is the lion tamer bit in there AT ALL? to contrast with intellect? "rather than use a chair and a whip, we use our minds to bargain with death". huh? also, is it really the *intellect* that tries to bargain with forces we can't control? wouldn't the intellect be the part of us that knows that is no use? and it's not useless because death has a wildness at the heart of it. it's not that we make a bargain with death, and death agrees, but then reneges because, darn it, it's just so wild. it's useless because death is an impersonal force that you can't communicate with. I think she should have stuck to poetry - you can get away with this kind of thing there, sticking lion tamers in where they don't belong. even then, it would have been better if the poem talks about trying to tame death with a whip and a chair, then trying to strike a bargain after the chair is splintered and the whip cannot sting death (ha) even as the claws descend. so this poetry doesn't make a good sentence and this sentence doesn't make good poetry.
  
  or this nonsense: "Eight year old Spencer Wyatt, of Dacula, Georgia, was diagnosed with epilepsy when he was three. His assistance dog, Lucia, stays with him day and night and summons help if he's having a seizure. We fight death with everything in our arsenal - when machines fail us, we call out the pack." this was from a section where she was apparently thinking dogs and death, what are the connections I can brainstorm? again, completely distracting fact where she introduces this character, name, town, dog's name, age of diagnosis, all that, as if he's going to figure. nope. that one sentence is all you ever hear of him and why the hell are we hearing of him specifically? does she know his mom? is this just a shout out? did she do a kickstarter for this book with a reward of getting your kid's name mentioned? because this doesn't have anything to do with death anyway. this is about a seizure dog. that kid is not unique in having one. then, the vague assertion. "when machines fail us, we call out the pack". what on earth does that mean? literally, it makes no sense. "well, I'm sorry charles, but we're not able to keep you alive with this respirator anymore. we're bringing in a group of dogs." does it mean we turn to our community? ugh.
  
  a bit later on from these two quotes, she writes at the start of a paragraph, out of nowhere, "Why is it that trivia catches my attention? Da Vinci believed that the heart was of such density that fire could not destroy it." ok, that question? that is not a question for your readers. we'll take the answer, if you have one, but we don't know you, we don't know why trivia catches your attention. we've seen you reporting it in complete non sequiturs, certainly.
  
  I read a bit of a review that remarked that the book was a "free-association meditation", and that captures it perfectly. that's not really something I want to read, however. most of the reviewers seem to love it. not me.
• 
  Donovan

  I was sadly disappointed in this book. A strange mix of reflection on her work in palliative care, coming to terms with her brother's death, and literary-cultural conjecture on death, left me dissatisfied about halfway through all the way to the end. Death is a place of ambiguity, but Joseph leaves the reader without means of finding meaning in death beyond the subjective experience.
• 
  Lexie

  A tender, mindful, cross-cultural compendium of stories, facts, and hints. A book that skirts the threshold that we all will cross. Eve Joseph worked in the hospice/palliative care field for over 20 years, lost her older brother to a car accident, and has been relentlessly curious about the "slender margin" we traverse when close to death. A gentle tone pervades the book, and it's full of wisdom:
  
  ~ ... there is no silence as perfect as that of the shell-shocked bereaved trying to be brave.
  
  ~ From the Old English hopian, meaning "to wish, expect, look forward to something," hope allows us to imagine a future. On the other hand, if we're not careful, if we're too focused on what we want to happen, we can miss what is happening right in front of us. Hope can be a thief. It can steal the present moment right out from under our feet.
  
  ~ "God is, or He is not," wrote Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth century. But which side to choose? His wager, as it was known, went something like this: weigh the gain and teh loss in wagering that God is ... If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
  
  ~ "Estrangement is at the root of suffering," writes Rabbi Dayle Friedman in Jewish Pastoral Care. Caregivers must find the stranger in themselves to understand what it might be like for the dying who are becoming estranged from all that is known.
  
  ~ "One leaf falling can occupy me all day." -- Quoted by a man who was very close to death.
  
  ~ With death, wrote P.K. Page, there is a divide between here and there. Were it not, she noted, for the inconsequential t, the words would be identical.
  
  ~ There are cemetaries that are lonely,
  graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
  the heart moving through a tunnel,
  in it darkness, darkness, darkness ...
  death is inside the bones,
  like a barking where there are no dogs.
  ~ Pablo Neruda, 1926
  
  ~ These be
  Three silent things:
  The falling snow ... the hour
  Before the dawn ... the mouth of one
  Just dead.
  ~ Adelaide Crapsey, "Triad"
• 
  Canadian Reader

  A meditation on death--including religious, mythological, anthropological, and some (just a few) medical musings about the endings of our human lives--Joseph's book put me in mind of poet Diane Ackerman's discursive nonfiction. The book has some of the strengths and (to my mind) suffers from some of the same (occasionally annoying) poetic excesses as Ackerman's. At times, the writing felt too pretty and precious to be genuine--drawing attention to itself rather than illuminating the subject. The title, however, really hits the mark: dying IS an act of intimate strangeness, and there ARE sections of the book in which Joseph--who has long worked in palliative care--does indeed convey this. Recommended with some reservations.
• 
  Andrea Taylor

  I am so fortunate to have discovered this book when I needed it most. It is just over a month after my mother’s death and on this journey of grief I have been in search of understanding and my own thoughts. Eve Joseph your insight has brought me to a new level of faith in my experiences of life and death.
• 
  Lucy McCoskey

  one of the early (1985) workers in the Palliative Care field writes poetically & insightfully about death, dying, and ministering & administering to those who leave
• 
  Courtney Tait

  The amount of research that went into this book blew my mind. Joseph has taken the topic of death and explored it from what feels like every possible angle: “history, religion, philosophy, literature, personal anecdote, mythology, poetry and pop culture” (Amazon). Reflecting on her experiences as a hospice care worker and the death of her brother when she was a young girl throughout, she examines the question of what happens to us when we die, how those left behind (in various cultures) navigate the transition, and why the language of poetry is akin to the language of death. Personal, powerful, and evocative.
• 
  Deborah Michel

  A lovely book! I kept talking about "this book I'm reading" to friends and family. I was moved by the stories - her own, as well as her family members and of those in hospice care taking their final journey. It's full of cultural, and historical references, and quite informative, but it reads like poetry. I wish my review for this book was as well written!
• 
  Lynn Tait

  Thought this might be an emotionally difficult read, but was not. I was quite comforted by these essays, that explore death. I had no idea that this poet had spent years working with the dead and dying in hospices. Part auto-biography, history, even trivia, I found this book fascinating and heart-warming. So glad I decided to read this engrossing book.
  
• 
  E

  A beautifully written book with an insightful perspective on death based on the author’s life experiences, including those with personal loss, palliative care, and hospices, as well as her background as a poet. This book is “all over the place” in a helpful way, bringing in quotations from a variety of cultures, contemporary writers, classical myth, religion, and art.
• 
  Stephanie

  Easy read. Did not make my head hurt but the writing provoked some thought on death and dying. Not my genre of choice as I read it as a part of book group. Author focuses and comes back to the unexpected early death of her brother, weaving his life details throughout the book. Running parallel to that story is the author's experiences as a social worker in the area of palliative care.
• 
  Marni

  A lovely book of her experiences with death in her family and then as a hospice worker for several years. She quotes many others. One I marked was 'Music began with a howl lamenting a loss. The howl became a prayer and from the hope in the prayer started music, which can never forget its origin. In it, hope and loss are a pair' (British artist and writer John Berger).
• 
  Ann Michael

  Wonderfully thought-provoking and well-written. No "answers," if that is what you're looking for in a book about death and dying. Instead, lovingly intimate truths that are often difficult, clearly reflected upon...a beautiful book.
• 
  Kate

  This is an extraordinary book. A love letter to the dying and the people that support them. Poignant, beautiful, sad, hopeful.
• 
  Judy Frabotta

  I liked it well enough, but I don't think this was the right book at the right time for me.
• 
  Deidre

  By far one of the best death books I've read so far. (Out of dozens) Poetic and thoughtful without being prescriptive.
• 
  Delia

  I read this for the second time following the death of my mum. It made me feel better.
• 
  Travel Writing

  Eve Joseph did not merely sit down and bleed on the page, (Paul Gallico), she gently reached in and untucked her soul and laid it bare for the world to see.
  
  This book weaves together personal narrative, poetry, death, music, grief, hope, theory of attachment, bikers, birthing out of this life, beliefs, fear, joy, humor, and some of the most stunning prose about dying I have had the delight (weird, to be so delighted at the beauty of writings about hospice and death and life) to read.
  
  I keep going back and reading bits and bobs, and it is still like magic, some ethereal magic that she can move so seamlessly in and around her stories.
  
  I wish I had this book in my hands when I lost my beloved brother in 2013. Or when I volunteered for hospice in Colorado in 2009. One afternoon, I received a call from a clients family, to let me know "Sam" was in the last stages. When I arrived, no one was in the room, but me and my beloved Sam who was in Cheyne-Stokes. I knew what was happening. I knew there was nothing to do, but to be present. And yet, I kept laying down Sam's hand and walking to the door, peering longingly down the hospital hallways- hoping that someone, anyone far more qualified then me would show up.
  
  The day Sam died, we were never alone.
  
  "On the night we die a thousand others go with us." ~ D.J. Enright
  
  "I did not understand that I was being shaped not so much by the grief but by the silence surrounding it."
  
  "I see now that our first experiences with loss shapes us in ways we don't understand at the time."
  
  About her brother who died: "He was beautiful, unfair, often drunk, and blazingly intelligent...and we have all aged, he has remind pinned in our imaginations as a young man with all the vitality and recklessness of youth- more alive in death than he ever could have been in life."
  
  "Mythology,legend, imagination, and poetry grow out of the same black soil as death. All exist beyond the frontiers of logic. It was to these things that I turned to try and find my way out of the basement."
  
  "Are we deepened by sorrow, or depleted by it? We hope to be spared the knowledge; we never imagine that we will hope the unthinkable."
  
  "Grief is inarticulate."
  
  "...valued instinct over protocol" Her first hospice mentor, Jo.
  
  "I was meeting the dying, but it was death itself I was being introduced to. A figure, a presence, a seduction, and a terror. Sometimes merciful; sometimes brutal. I was slowly learning a new language. Slowly learning to see in new ways."
  
  "There are not a lot of young volunteers; this is not their country yet."
  
  "To be with the dying is to wade into mystery."
  
  "There is no road map for the dying or the bereaved. No linear path. There are stages that go back and forth. Moments of grace, moments of anguish. Grief is a mess."
  
  "Our bones fuse together as we grow; we are building our scaffolding without even knowing it. "
  
  "Some deaths are tame, others are feral; wild and unpredictable.'
  
• 
  Anne

  This book has been on my list since I read And the Birds Rained Down a few years ago, and it just finally got to the top of my list. This was a super interesting book. Eve Joseph compares how different cultures deal with death and dying, especially the Coast Salish, which was really unique. Another interesting technique that is used is etymology. Eve will review the etymology of a word relating to death and dying and by doing so makes the reader see the word, and the process, in a whole new light. The memoir aspect of this book is limited, but I didn't mind that. Joseph perfectly connects her experiences with the death of her brother, mother, and many patients into a frame, within which she weaves the anthropology, language, culture, and practices of death. This book was beautiful and fascinating and is definitely one I'd read again.