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 funny journey to newness. 25,000 first printing."
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Isobel Albright is not the type of person to panic. "I was too sedentary. Around me, time and space made tracks but even they were only spiral, concentric, overlapping as the seasons." On the other hand, she's just found a lump (though it feels too sharp for that term) on her breast; her chief curator job has gone up in smoke--or at least the Fox Valley Historical Museum has; and she's sharing a bed with her best friend's son.
Mortal illness is not the sort of adventure Isobel has been craving, and yet Abby Frucht movingly turns her fate into an experience of wonder and grief. Life Before Death cuts between 1995 and 1996 and various points in the future, up to 2010. In the present, Isobel is dying; when time extends, she is in remission and her life is filled with friendship, children, a husband. "I missed him as fiercely as if I knew who he was." Frucht grounds her heroine's supple, searching imagination in a heart-stopping reality.
From Booklist
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
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing! Wonderfully imaginative.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Life Before Death: A Novel (Paperback)
Wow! This is one of those books where, when you finish reading it, you spread it on your lap and savor it all. The story is intense and sad, yet filled with hope, humor and saavy wit. You know the narrator is ill right from the start, but then you almost forget that fact. As the book intensifies so does the wild ride you're on. And then there's the perfect ending, and the poignant revelation about her husband's identity and her farewell words to her friends... I cried, I laughed, I cannot recommend this book more highly. Bravo!
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