Beyond the High Blue Air: A Memoir
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.85 (927 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B01MXXLISH |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 421 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-12-31 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
''Like The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Beyond the High Blue Air is a spare, sharp memoir about the speed with which a comfortable existence can be blighted by grief.'' --Bee Wilson, The Sunday Times ''A painful account made beautiful by Spinney's poignant details and tender insight.'' --Booklist ''Lu Spinney has a tragic story to tell. But what she expresses -- disbelief, hope, anger, dismay -- is universal. And the ethical questions she raises are vitally important. She is in England, and she and the rest of the family hurry to the hospital in Innsbruck where doctors are trying to save his life. A compassionate, raw and intimate journey that no one ever chooses to embark on, but one in which the landmarks must be discussed.'' --Marika Zemke, Librarian, Commerce Township Public Library''Every mother's nightmare -- Lu receives a call that her 29 year old son has been seriously injured in a snowboarding accident. It's no
Beautifully written the reader discovers how Lu's intelligent Lorna Welch An honest and heart wrenching read, Lu Spinney's account of her son's life after suffering a traumatic head injury from a skiing accident is a reminder of how a single incident can change not just one person's life instantly but a family's. Beautifully written the reader discovers how Lu's intelligent, healthy and determin
After university, she left South Africa to live in Nice and Paris before settling in London.. Lu Spinney was born in Cape Town and spent her childhood on a farm in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal, later moving with her family to the Indian Ocean coast north of Durban
“Like The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Beyond the High Blue Air is a spare, sharp memoir about the speed with which a comfortable existence can be blighted by grief.” —Bee Wilson, The Sunday TimesLu Spinney’s memoir Beyond the High Blue Air is at once a portrait of the fearlessness of familial love and the profound dilemma posed by modern medicine. And yet, even as she allows this difficult revelation to settle, she learns that this is not her decision to make. They hold out hope that he will be returned to them. Spinney, her husband, and three other children put their lives on hold to tend to Miles at various hospitals and finally in a care home. This profound book encompasses the lyrical revelations of a memoir like Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as well as the crucial medical and moral insights of a book such as Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.. Because Miles is diagnosed as being in a “minimally conscious state” rather than a “persistent vegetative state,” there is no legal way to bring about his death, a bewildering paradox that Spinney navigates with compassion and wisdom. When Spinney’s twenty-nine-year-old son, Miles, flies up on his snowboard, “he knows he is not in control as he is taken by force up the r