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If There Are Any Heavens: A Memoir
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35/99
Critics
52/99
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Volume
98/99
Rating
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About This Book
Written with visceral urgency in the earliest days of grief, If There Are Any Heavens resists it is a memoir, a poem, a mournful but loving song. On January 6, 2021, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in America, while the U.S. Capitol is under attack, Nicholas Montemarano drives six hundred miles to see his mother, who is hospitalized with COVID pneumonia and in a critical state. For ten days he lives in a hotel minutes from the hospital, alternating between hope and helplessness. This is the story of those ten days. It is the story of the pandemic told through the intimate prism of one family's loss. Written with visceral urgency in the earliest days of grief, If There Are Any Heavens resists it is a memoir, a poem, a mournful but loving song. Its form asks readers to slow down and breathe between each broken line. At other moments, a chorus of voices―anti-maskers, COVID-deniers, and doctors―causes the reader to become breathless. It is an almost real-time account of the anxiety, uncertainty, and sorrow brought on by this pandemic. It is also, finally, a devastating homage to a family's love in a time of great loss. Now, and many years from now, when people want to understand the personal cost of the COVID-19 pandemic, they will turn to this intimate and spare elegy from a son to his mother.
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Reviews
"Montemarano painstakingly documents the final 10 days of his mother's life and of the desperate efforts made to save her...He describes not one, but two 'end-of-life' visits, when he is invited to the hospital to spend an hour with his dying mother, but is assured he can 'take a little longer if you need/ no rush'...Even after the first of these visits, there are moments of hope, when Montemarano and his twin sister, herself a nurse, cling to the belief that if their mother can continue to do her breathing exercises diligently, there is a chance she'll beat the odds and come home to her husband...But in the end, those glimpses of what recovery might look like are extinguished by the disease's relentless course...The mingled feelings of powerlessness and grief Montemarano experiences as the end of his mother's life approaches will be familiar to anyone who has been with a loved one in the final days of an implacable illness...If There Are Any Heavens is a book whose substance and form match perfectly...Though his story is specific--a description of only one death among more than a million--his eloquence transports it to the realm of the universal."
"Novelist Montemarano presents a unique personal perspective from the height of the COVID pandemic in the United States, which he equates to a '1950s science fiction movie'...Most of his family has contracted the virus, and he takes precautions to protect his parents from the illness, going so far as to remind them that 'hugs could kill'...Unfortunately, both of his parents eventually contract the virus, and his mother in particular becomes critically ill with pneumonia and requires hospitalization...This account is written in an unusual style that combines aspects of memoir, stream-of-consciousness narration, and poetry...Montemarano's unique literary memoir offers an absorbing, visceral experience of the pandemic and should easily find a dedicated audience."
"Award-winning novelist and short story writer Montemarano chronicles his 79-year-old mother's last days as she struggled to overcome Covid-19...At the end of 2020, she developed a cough and fever and was quickly hospitalized when her oxygen levels dropped...On Jan."
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