Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary

by Rebecca Brown

Book Overview

Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary is an intimate, exquisite, and true account of what it is to help a parent die. After her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, former home care worker and award-winning writer Rebecca Brown cared for her mother during the last six months of her life. This spare, unsentimental book comes out of that experience. In short chapters headed by definitions of medical terms, she confronts anemia, chemotherapy,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0299189708
• ISBN13: 9780299189709
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Length: 113 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.7" x 10.9"

Customer Reviews

The beautiful stark poetry of death

Well I have been a doctor 26 years. My sister dies when I was 20 years. This is almost poetic in its stark Hemingway style of narration of a loved mother's death. I cannot think of anyone who should not read this book. Family, love, pain, compassion, loss, and a beautiful family end.

Must read for all who have a dying loved one...

Having witnessed two in-laws passing on after terminal illnesses, I came into reading this powerful book with some experiences... but the story EXCERPTS FROM A FAMILY MEDICAL DICTIONARY moved me to tears, made me laugh (during one scene involving two sisters in the backyard) and thoroughly saturated my senses for several hours...until I was completely drained...and satisfied. BRAVO!

Greatly pleasing work on timeless themes of loss

I greatly enjoyed Rebecca Brown's work. I had the opportunity to hear Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary when the author visited our college campus in September. I found her writing to be poetic and passionate, lingering somewhere between the worlds of prose and fiction. I was greatly moved by her beautiful descriptions of pain and loss. The format of the work as a dictionary also proved interesting.