Life before Death

When first she finds a tiny, sharp lump in her breast and then the museum where she is curator burns down, Isobel Albright realizes her reasonable, predictable life will never be the same and embarks on an empowering and humorous journey to newness

Frucht (Are You Mine?, 1993, etc.) imbues a dreary premise (woman discovers lump in breast, is diagnosed with cancer, dies) with remarkable originality and insight, leaving the reader pondering the nature of life and death. Two dramatic things happen to museum curator Isobel Albright during one week in her 40th year. First, she discovers a tiny lump in her breast. Then, a few days later, the small midwestern museum where she works burns down. As Isobel joins her fellow employees in trying to salvage the charred contents of the museum's collections, she also quietly undergoes a series of diagnostic tests that eventually reveal that her lump is malignant; even with an aggressive course of chemotherapy, she's told, she has only a ten- percent chance to live. Counseled by her best friend, Martha, who flies in from Seattle, and by Martha's dreamy, quasi-clairvoyant 19-year-old son, Hercules, who's been sleeping in Isobel's guest room for a while (and whom sensible, responsible, unmarried Isobel adores), Isobel opts to skip the chemo in favor of fully experiencing the few months that she has remaining. Approaching her death as methodically as she's approached her life, she continues her work at the museum while beginning to review her own past. But desperate longings rise to the surface nevertheless, and the bright, joyous life that Isobel might have had takes on far more vivid life in her imagination than the sweet, faded memories to which she bids farewell. The experience of dying--of giving up what was and grieving for what might have been--is extraordinarily well captured in Frucht's sometimes whimsical, often luminous prose. A unique and memorable work, marking a new level of artistry for the author. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

When Isobel Albright finds a lump in her breast, she almost welcomes the prospect of uncertainty it brings to her life. Up until then, her world, bounded by her job as a curator in a historical museum and by her comfortable apartment, which she shares in platonic companionship with the son of her best friend, has been predictably safe. When the museum burns down, it signifies a complete break from Isobel's well-ordered past. Now, she has two new lives. In one, she is the Bald Butterfly Queen who undergoes chemotherapy and is cured; in the other, she turns down treatment. Which life is real? Gradually, the reader comes to understand that Isobel's life beyond cancer--the life in which she is propelled into a future of good health, children, and marriage--is the full, long life that she imagines for herself; her real life is the one in which she is dying. Her narrative slips back and forth between present and future, both equally real to Isobel. Frucht's use of images, such as the old 1940s-style telephone that seems to connect Isobel to her imagined years, is extremely effective. Poignant and beautifully written. Mary Ellen Quinn