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Whatever The Gods Do by Patti Miller
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Whatever The Gods Do (edition 2003)

by Patti Miller (Author)

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"The Vedas say singing is the voice of the soul: Whatever the gods do, they do by song." After spending the last seven years caring for and being the "second mother" of nine-year-old Theo, whose mother died a lingering death when he was a toddler, Patti is devastated when his father decides to leave the Blue Mountains with his son for a new life in Melbourne. Desperately missing Theo and undergoing the first flushes of menopause, she needs something to distract her from her misery. Much to the good-natured derision of her friends and family, she decides to give singing lessons a go, something she has always longed to do, despite her misgivings about her voice. But, if anything, the lessons make her feel worse - she can't even get the notes out, let alone sing them in tune. Throughout the saga of her singing lessons, Patti takes the reader on a journey back to the beginning of her life with Theo; her friendship with his parents, Kit and Dina; the fateful day when Dina bent over to pick something up and an aneurysm burst in her brain, leaving her paralysed and catatonic; the months of hospital visits and Dina's slow partial recovery; Kit's heroic but devastating decision to care for his wife at home; and Dina's eventual death after a year of pain and struggle. In charting the instantaneous transformation of Dina's life, the slow unfolding of her own connection to Theo, the subterranean shifts of her body's rhythms, and her painstaking efforts to sing, Patti exposes the trials and ultimate triumph in finding the tone and timbre of one's own voice recounting its own experience of being, whether it be through writing or singing. Like all great memoirs, WHATEVER THE GODS DO is at times almost unbearably moving, yet shines throughout with hope and resonates with love for life and living.… (more)
Member:Pauntley
Title:Whatever The Gods Do
Authors:Patti Miller (Author)
Info:Vintage Books (2003), 227 pages
Collections:Travelling Booknotes - 1993-1994
Rating:***
Tags:Memoir, lifewriting, friendship, brain haemorrhage

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Whatever The Gods Do by Patti Miller

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"The Vedas say singing is the voice of the soul: Whatever the gods do, they do by song." After spending the last seven years caring for and being the "second mother" of nine-year-old Theo, whose mother died a lingering death when he was a toddler, Patti is devastated when his father decides to leave the Blue Mountains with his son for a new life in Melbourne. Desperately missing Theo and undergoing the first flushes of menopause, she needs something to distract her from her misery. Much to the good-natured derision of her friends and family, she decides to give singing lessons a go, something she has always longed to do, despite her misgivings about her voice. But, if anything, the lessons make her feel worse - she can't even get the notes out, let alone sing them in tune. Throughout the saga of her singing lessons, Patti takes the reader on a journey back to the beginning of her life with Theo; her friendship with his parents, Kit and Dina; the fateful day when Dina bent over to pick something up and an aneurysm burst in her brain, leaving her paralysed and catatonic; the months of hospital visits and Dina's slow partial recovery; Kit's heroic but devastating decision to care for his wife at home; and Dina's eventual death after a year of pain and struggle. In charting the instantaneous transformation of Dina's life, the slow unfolding of her own connection to Theo, the subterranean shifts of her body's rhythms, and her painstaking efforts to sing, Patti exposes the trials and ultimate triumph in finding the tone and timbre of one's own voice recounting its own experience of being, whether it be through writing or singing. Like all great memoirs, WHATEVER THE GODS DO is at times almost unbearably moving, yet shines throughout with hope and resonates with love for life and living.

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