The Gifts of the Body [Paperback]

Rebecca Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 1995

An emotionally wrenching work of fiction about a health-care worker who tenders compassion and love to victims of AIDS, by an author who "strips her language of convention to lay bare the ferocious rituals of love and need."--New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The unnamed narrator of this beautifully controlled, immensely affecting novel, is a home care aid who helps those afflicted with AIDS. In a series of brief chapters written in casually vernacular language, Brown depicts this woman's visits to a varied group of victims, including young gay men, an elderly widow infected through a blood transfusion and a fellow volunteer. The narrator brings to them the gifts of tender care, compassion and respect. They in turn give her the gifts of insight, openness and intimacy; they teach her about dignity and courage. She observes the inexorability of their decline: young men prematurely moribund, "like a bunch of 95-year-olds watching their generation die." She understands the ironies: the anxious wait for a room at a hospice and the realization that "when you actually got it, it was like getting your [death] sentence." As one by one her clients die, her deliberate emotional distancing gives way to the pain of loss; she realizes that for the victims of this plague, the gift of mercy is the gift of death, and that the final gift is the gift of mourning. Brown (The Children's Crusade) brings off her difficult task with assured sensitivity. Deceptively simple, the narrative grows in power, establishing a strong bond of empathy in the reader and conveying the visceral impact of a shared emotional experience. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

An unnamed female healthcare worker relates her experiences as she cares for homebound patients with AIDS in this fictional memoir. Using different "gifts" for scenario shifts, the narration flows through many of the changes that happen to the body and its functions as the disease progresses. Everyday challenges are simply depicted as she tends to the housekeeping duties of her clients. Her actions embody the insightfulness, commitment, rapport, and humanity needed to sustain oneself at this job. The recording is read by the author, so the direct, unsentimental yet powerful language unfolds just as she intended. The book has won several awards (the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction and the Boston Book Award, among others); the recording is highly recommended for all adult listeners.?Kristin M. Jacobi, Eastern Connecticut State Univ., Willimantic
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (August 4, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060926538
• ISBN-13: 978-0060926533
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #807,511 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books I've read about taking care of people, January 31, 1998

By 

A reader (Cincinnati, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gifts of the Body (Paperback)

Rebecca Brown's THE GIFTS OF THE BODY really cast a spell on me, with its sober delicate style, and its no-nonsense but very humble approach. It is incredibly hard to write about the emotions involved in taking care of people who are sick, but Brown does this by allowing her narrator to remain almost anonymous, and the only way she is revealed is through what she does for people, the simple yet startlingly intimate services she performs for people--from giving baths to cleaning kitchens to just being there to have a meal with them. These acts of kindness, although performed by someone who is paid to be there, become glimpses of hope, just glimpses though, which makes them even more poignant that extravagant "heroic" narratives about "Saving Lives." The narrator is not saving lives, as much as helping people to stay comfortable as the ravages of disease take them past comfort into a terrible region of pain. The sentiments in this book are toned down almost to a purity of spirit: there is deep feeling, but not of the variety most people are used to. The depth comes from the frankness and business-like accuracy of the narrator, the way people come and go, the why finally she just has to quit for a while just to stay sane. This book is amazing, and should be read by everyone, but especially by people who work with people who are disabled, sick, who need care.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spare and exacting, no melodrama here., April 29, 2000

By 

Kristin Summerlin (Two Rivers, AK USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Gifts of the Body (Paperback)

As a respite worker, I picked this book up not expecting the author to "get it right." I was wrong. She gets it so right I found myself shaken. Brown's words express my own experiences so clearly, so plainly, and her stories are leavened oh-so-sparingly with the piquant emotions that arise in the give-and-take of working with disabled, ill, aging, dying people.

Best of all, after reading this book you will know why a person chooses -- or should not choose, in some cases -- to enter this field.

If at all possible, find the audiobook copy, read by Ms. Brown herself. Her voice, as sparing as her prose, sings with the subtlest vibration.

Understatement is the gift of her voice.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading, July 24, 2005

By 

J. Wilkerson "WannaBeWriter" (Cape Cod, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Gifts of the Body (Paperback)

The most honest, beautiful, and loving look at death and dying written in decades. Brown's lyric simplicity, and unasuming voice, draw us into lives and relationships with an urgency and depth that is chilling and soul-deep. This novel should be required reading; it uncovers the truth of giving.