From my Club Read 09 journal (http://www.librarything.com/topic/586...)

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I realized last night, after finishing Ruth Picardie's Before I Say Goodbye, that I've been on a rather morbid memoir streak this year: there was The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, then Carole Radziwill's What Remains, at least one other whose name escapes me at the moment, and now Picardie's Before I Say Goodbye. Each features a medical dimension; for Radziwill and Picardie it's cancer (although R is writing about losing a husband to it, while P wrote about her own experience). But my gut reaction to Goodbye was much warmer than to the other two. Perhaps my being closer to her in age (Picardie died in her early 30s) had something to do with that, but I also liked the book better for its rough form: instead of a smooth, seamless 1st person memoir, Picardie's book is made up of emails, letters and opinion pieces, ordered chronologically. This to me comes off as a far more 'real' form for contemporary memoir in this electronic age. And it also allows the reader to watch the evolution of certain ideas and ways of expressing them from their initial appearances in personal emails to their later published form. As someone who likes writing nearly as much as reading, I really appreciated that.

Finally, I want to add that Picardie's emails to and from a friend named India were my favorite parts. Some had me laughing out loud. Those bits gave the book a sort of 'Bridget Jones Gets Breast Cancer' edge: comic rants, jokes about diet, fashion, followed by moments of (very self-conscious) self-pity followed by shots of self-deprecating humor... If I ever come down with a terminal illness, or correspond with a close friend who has, I can imagine reading and writing emails like these.

Almost 4 stars. ( )

Die britische Journalistin und Mutter von Zwillingsbabys Ruth Picardie berichtet aus der letzten Zeit ihres Lebens. Justine Picardie veröffentlichte mit „Noch einmal deine Stimme hören: Leben nach dem Tod meiner Schwester“ (Orig.: If the spirit moves you. Life and love after death) bei Hoffmann und Campe 2002 ein Buch zum Gedächtnis ihrer Schwester. ( )