This book tells the story of a Sister's death - a year in her own life after and of a search for the afterlife in the age of reason, of scepticism, of science. It will make you laugh as well as cry, an extraordinary book about grief, but also the power of love.
Picador, 2001, £7.99

Unbelievably sad how this family suffers so much loss in one year, but very heartwarming the way the author looks for her sister after death. ( )

Here's what I wrote about this book elsewhere:

I'm three quarters of the way through this book and the only reason I haven't torn it in half along the spine & thrown it in the bin is because I have great self-control and because I am interested - in a perverse sort of way - in seeing just how bad it can get. Thank heavens the book I've got was one was one of those remaindered copies at a discount book sale.....paying anything other than a dollar for this nonsense would be a complete rip-off.

I think this book is a prime example of what some publishing houses have been doing for some time now, giving the go ahead for books on subjects which could - at the very best - suffice as a magazine article.

This ridiculous book is written in the tired old "entries in a diary" format - a sure sign if ever there was one that the writer is struggling for any narrative and hasn't got enough material for a book. Each entry is usually preceded by a excerpt or quotation from another writers work & in some instances entries are ended with another quotation.......if all the quotations were taken out of the book that would probably be 50 pages gone right there...the fact that one of the works quoted is by that complete charlatan Sylvia Browne ( an moronic American "psychic") is perhaps a reasonable indication of the depths to which this lightweight book sinks.

Of the rest I have read so far the vast majority is taken up by an endless stream of entries where Picardie describes a dream she had about either her deceased sister or someone else who has passed on. It's bad enough having to listen to a tale about ONE dream....in this drivel we are regaled with transcriptions of dream after dream after dream......writing about your dreams is fine if it's just in some journal you keep in a bedside table, but actually thinking that these will interest anyone other than yourself is a indication of either complete and utter self-importance or someone struggling to churn out enough pages to add up to a book.

The incessantly inane "conversations" that Picardie includes in the book between herself and dead people are beyond the pale.

These "conversations" - I suppose the reader is required to presume - are taking place in Picardie's mind and are between herself and her dead sister & yet they appear on the page and are presented to the reader as a perfectly normal dialogue between two people over the telephone, or perhaps a coffee.

Picardie: "You there?"

Ruth (her dead sister) "Yes."

Picardie: "What are you doing?"

Ruth (her dead sister) "I'm looking at you"

Shall I write you - at this very moment - a conversation between myself and my dead father?

Me: "You there dad?"

Me: "You there dad?"

Me: "You there dad?"

Me: "You there dad?"

Notice how he didn't SAY ANYTHING? People DO NOT HAVE conversations with their dead relatives.