In this intimate and deeply reflective literary memoir, a writer revisits her friendship with Lisette - an elderly French émigré living alone by the ocean in Western Australia - who calmly and deliberately chose the time and manner of her own death.
Over cups of tea, manuscript discussions and long conversations about literature, memory, desire and ageing, Lisette gradually reveals the logic behind her decision. Once a glamorous cosmopolitan woman who moved through postwar New York among artists, diplomats and celebrities, she now faces the indignities of physical decline with fierce lucidity and unwavering independence. Refusing institutionalisation and determined to preserve her autonomy, she prepares meticulously for what she calls "the big thing."
Blending memoir, philosophical reflection and reconstructed narrative, the book becomes far more than an account of assisted dying. It is a meditation on friendship, female ageing, invisibility, memory, erotic life, exile and the painful distance between youth and old age. Moving between Perth, Lisbon, France and memories of Manhattan, the narrator examines the emotional and ethical complexity of Lisette's choice while confronting her own evolving understanding of mortality.
Written in luminous, restrained prose, this work stands apart for its compassion, intellectual honesty and emotional precision. Rather than arguing polemically, it offers an unforgettable portrait of one woman's determination to shape the end of her life on her own terms - and of the friend left behind to understand it.
Catherine Rey was born in Saintes, studied and taught French Literature in Bordeaux before leaving France for Australia in 1997.Her debut novel L'ami intime was published in 1994 by the iconic French publisher Le Temps Qu'il Fait. It received a laudatory review in Le Monde. Rey followed this with seven more works published in France, two of which have been translated into English and garnered high praise.One of these is The Spruiker's Tale, a novel short-listed for the prestigious Renaudot and Femina Prizes in France (Ce que racontait Jones) and translated by Andrew Reimer. Also published by Giramondo came the fictionalised autobiography Stepping Out (translated from Une femme en marche by Julie Rose), where the author anatomises her consuming struggle to find her writing voice through a difficult relationship with her mother.In 2018 Rey published with Gazebo Books The Lovers, her first English language novel. Miles Franklin Award winner Michelle de Kretser described The Lovers as 'impeccably crafted' and Catherine Ford in The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age as 'an impressive feat of complex and nuanced story-telling'.
