I had started to become a little dissatisfied with my reading so far this year - yes, there were some pleasant diversions, but nothing really blew me away, until Virginia Lloyd's memoir of her all-too-brief relationship with her husband John, his battle with cancer and her subsequent struggle with her life after his death as well as the mammoth task of restoring an old Sydney terrace, riddled by rising damp, to its former glory.Lloyd's story is utterly tragic - when at 32, she meets the 'man of her dreams', he is already terminally ill with cancer and has suffered through seven years worth of increasingly futile treatment for a rare type of bone cancer. They start a relationship anyway, and marry, although his disease progresses quickly, and he dies one month shy of their first wedding anniversary, leaving Lloyd a widow at just 34.
The narrative blends an account of their time together, as their lives were increasingly impacted by John's growing pain and immobility, and how Lloyd tries to pick up the pieces and move forward with her life after his death. The house's advanced state of decomposition and the huge amount of restoration it requires provides an apt metaphor for the process Lloyd must also undergo to recover from her emotional trauma.
While it is in no way overwritten or overly sentimental, Lloyd conveys the power of the love between her and her husband. It is perhaps a testament to this love that although the outcome was pretty clear from the beginning of their relationship, she not only seemed to have no hesitation about what she was getting into, and afterwards expressed no regret - rather gratitude - that they had met and fallen in love at all, only that it was over too soon. Sometimes it is horribly raw; but for a book with such a sad story, it is... well I wouldn't call it anything so twee as uplifting... but it certainly is as beautiful as it is moving and heart-wrenching.
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