Preamble: the author is, sort of a little bit kind of a relative. Around the edges. By marriage. Still, it’s not as if we actually know each other. Really.
Anyway, Tiah is a writer. Her latest book, published by Modjaji Books in Cape Town, is called “This Day.” If she or her publisher had furnished me a copy of it for review, I’d have to confess it. Since I bought the book myself, I can say whatever I please. Good. Bad. Mediocre. Anything.
I’m sure the very idea of me saying anything that comes to mind is terrifying to some of you.
Here is the problem, though. I am not someone who reviews books. I don’t even really talk about them properly in person.
“This Day” is a story about a day in the life of a woman dealing with the aftermath of the death of her child. It is the story of grief and how Ella gets through through just one day.
Ella’s husband husband has been thrown into a major depression by their son’s death, and has stopped working or caring for himself or her. Her mother-in-law, who was caring for the child when he died, has also died from the side effects of grief. Ella is struggling to deal with her own grief about her son’s death while caring for her clinically depressed husband.
It isn’t a cheerful, feel good book. What Tiah does amazingly well is to make you feel Ella’s grief over her loss and her anger and frustration at her husband’s depression and the impact it is having on their lives and relationship. Ella feels very real. She is not always likable, but you can understand and feel everything she does. The book doesn’t spare us from the very genuine portrayal of how frustrating it is to deal with someone who isn’t able to care for himself even though there is nothing physically wrong.
Tiah writes emotion, and the physical effects of emotion very well. You can feel how tight Ella’s muscles must be. How hard she is working just to keep herself moving. How keeping her emotions inside of her is damaging her. How she keeps trying to just make it through each moment. Unlike her husband, she doesn’t have the luxury of surrendering to her grief. She is emotionally hard on herself for feeling the way she does.
The day goes by, we feel Ella struggle with pain, memory, loss, anger. We feel her struggle to hold on to the things that make her who she is, trying to deal with who she was before all of the loss and who she might become. We see there is no easy fix. No one is going to wake up suddenly better.
It’s not an easy book, but it is a beautiful one.
Tiah’s Amazon page is here for those who would like to pick up a copy. I would definitely recommend it!