Why Not Me: A Story of Love and Loss
By (Author) Barbara Want
Orion Publishing Co
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1st June 2011
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Coping with / advice about death and bereavement
155.937092
Paperback
272
Width 154mm, Height 199mm, Spine 19mm
228g
This haunting memoir of grief recounts the death from cancer of Nick Clarke, much-loved BBC radio presenter of The world at One - and the aftermath - from his widow Barbara's point of view.
With painful honesty, Barbara lays open her ambivalent feelings about the illness as it progressed and her instinctive fear that this would be the end. As he got sicker, her fear grew, until he died an unfeasibly short time after his diagnosis.Barbara chronicles in unflinching prose her life after his death. A howl of anguish and anger, she describes how many of her friends and colleagues don't call and don't offer support - how alone she is and how she struggles to explain the unexplainable to her young twin sons. She has a breakdown and a short-lived relationship (met with condemnation from some of her friends), but knows the process of dealing with her grief is barely beginning.The true grit of Why Not Me is Want's brave admissions about the emotional turmoil of a grieving widow. * BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH *
Barbara Want is a writer and broadcaster. She was a BBC TV producer before her twin sons were born in 2002. They live in London. She is also the author of Baby Secrets.