Marian Finucane’s unforgettable radio interview with her dying friend Nuala O’Faolain on a Saturday morning in April 2008 revealed a spirit annihilated by a brutal cancer prognosis. Though I didn’t know her, Nuala’s despair broke my heart. Convinced that I could find the perfect poem or prose piece that would console her, I began a search that abruptly ended with her death just 19 days later.
My own cancer diagnosis in 2014 reignited a desire to uncover profound writing about this life-changing experience. A personal quest morphed into the concept for a book that would present 50 extraordinary treasures from the world of literature about cancer to patients, loved ones and caregivers. Encompassing novels, memoirs, poetry, short stories and more, The Breath of Consolation: Finding Solace in Cancer Literature introduces works that are empowering, empathetic and consoling.
Selecting great books about cancer should be easy, right? After all, libraries and bookshops are overflowing with tomes on the subject. In reality, it is a monumental challenge. The vast trove of writing means it is tantamount to searching for rare plants in a vast and ever-expanding jungle. Guidance is needed to navigate swiftly and surely to writing that illuminates the complexities of the cancer experience and, in so doing, helps us endure suffering, find meaning and recover hope.
I wasn’t fazed by the task ahead. After all, I was a public librarian. Cancer had abruptly ended my career but not my faith in the power of reading, nor my skills for bringing book lovers and remarkable writing together.
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Cancer’s chilling heterogeneity ensures that an individual’s experience of the difficult and sometimes disfiguring physical impacts of the disease and its treatment is unique. The human response to the psychological, emotional and spiritual trauma that follows a cancer diagnosis, however, is universal. It is as if our world has been blown apart. Finding words for what we are going through seems impossible. Agonising spiritual and psychological questions haunt us. Given how precious life is, how do we come to terms with mortality? Can we find some way to acknowledge it, accept life’s precariousness and unpredictability, and live meaningfully and fully in the time given to us?
The emotional challenges that cancer inflicts on friendships and family relationships add yet another layer of misery. Feelings of powerlessness, vulnerability and loneliness are inevitable. Family, friends and professional psychological care all have a vital role to play but readers have another powerful resource at their fingertips when they are searching for insight, meaning and perspective.
Cancer literature really matters. It tells the truth, in all its complexity, of what it is to live with cancer and face death. It allows readers to see more clearly and figure out how to live authentically. Immerse yourself in great cancer writing. Don’t worry – it is not a morbid undertaking. You will find fiercely honest accounts of extraordinary suffering. But you will also discover writing that is suffused with hard-earned wisdom, gratitude and yes, even joy. Paradoxically, in looking suffering and death in the eye, it is life, and all that makes it richly meaningful, that is celebrated.
And here is the crux: this is literature with strength and purpose. It contains lessons in suffering and dying that everyone can learn from. Even better, these lessons belong not just to our final crossing, but to every crossing in our lives. Edna O’Brien’s description of profound writing as coming out of the “gouged times, when the heart is cut open” should also be applied to the act of reading. When the anguished writer and reader meet, the sense of joyous connection, of kinship, of no longer being alone in a dark place, is deeply comforting. It is as if you and the writer are in cahoots, forging meaning together. Dealing with cancer and mortality becomes less frightening. Self-understanding and acceptance are finally within reach.
Deciding how best to present the literary gold that I was discovering was challenging. Readers grappling with cancer find that their ability to concentrate is often stolen from them. Old reading habits are disrupted and even derailed, as mental and physical health takes a nosedive. The desire to read waxes and wanes and is often stymied by the difficulty of finding the right book for the immediate moment.
The solution I found to these problems is multifaceted. The Breath of Consolation is simultaneously an anthology, a compendium, a treasure chest and a reader’s companion. It is structured around five key genres: memoir, novel, short stories, poetry and creative non-fiction. Each is a place of sanctuary and solace. Immerse yourself in a beloved genre or venture out into less familiar waters. Open it anywhere and read just an excerpt or a poem. Dive in for a deeper browse knowing that, wherever you land, you will find common ground.
When we feel imprisoned by despair and cut off from the world, the alchemy of great cancer writing releases us
A scrupulously gender-blind selection process resulted in a near perfect balance, and marginalised voices speak loudly. Cancer literature from three centuries, six continents and 13 countries features. An essay introduces each work with salient details, carefully chosen excerpts and in-depth interpretations.
From the start it was clear that certain books were guaranteed a place. The inclusion of Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Tillie Olsen’s short story Tell Me a Riddle was never in question. So too Audre Lorde’s landmark memoirs that critiqued cancer culture and changed cancer literature forever. Works by writers of towering presence took their places by right, including personal favourites by JM Coetzee, Pat Barker, Helen Dunmore and Elizabeth Strout. I am pleased but not at all surprised that seven Irish writers – Jennifer Johnston, John McGahern, Lia Mills, Elaine Feeney, Ciaran Carson, Mary Costello and CS Lewis – feature.
I was very happy to add works by neglected novelists, poets, memoirists and journalists whose writing is arresting and accomplished. Closest to my heart are the poets Mary Bradish O’Connor and Philip Hodgins. Both were keenly aware of their Irish roots but remain largely unknown here in Ireland. My hope is that my book will win them new readers who will find solace in their words. It would be thrilling if it also prompts Irish public libraries to stock their work
There is something quite magical in how my odyssey brought me full circle. The Breath of Consolation concludes with an essay about Oliver Sacks’s book Gratitude. If I had to choose just one work that I think might have provided Nuala O’Faolain with the solace she so desperately needed, it would be Sacks’s remarkable statement of departure.
As diverse as the writers who created them are, all 50 works share certain qualities. All deal unflinchingly with the pain and suffering of cancer and break the culture of silence around death. Critical concerns are teased out and placed centre stage. Writers struggling with existential crises bring clarity and insight to spiritual and philosophical questions.
The emotional challenges cancer imposes on friendships and family relationships are astutely explored. Thorny issues such as the tyranny of positivity, quack medicine, the battlefield language of cancer and the role of patient advocacy are all addressed. The chosen writers do not simplify the cancer experience. Rather, they broaden it out, embracing its complexity and distilling hard-won wisdom.
I began with the lofty ambition of producing a definitive introductory collection – the last word, if you will – on cancer literature. I soon realised that this was a foolhardy mission. My compilation is simply a starting point, a subjective choice mirroring the person I am and the experiences that have shaped me.
Preventing readers from losing sight of works that matter is a key aim. Selected works of any kind are usually hotly debated and sometimes controversial. Noting absences and disagreeing with choices is simply part of the fun. My hope is that this book too will generate such criticism. Even better, it may lead others to create new bridges to great cancer literature for readers to delight in. After all, those of us living and dying with cancer will be the ultimate beneficiaries.
An ancient Egyptian library had the words “The Place of the Cure of the Soul” inscribed on its entrance. It is a fitting description of what librarians down through history have aspired to create. It also perfectly captures what I set out to achieve for cancer literature with this book. When we feel imprisoned by despair and cut off from the world, the alchemy of great cancer writing releases us. It heals our despair. It restores the possibility of becoming, as was so perfectly expressed by Emily Brontë, “chainless souls”, with the strength to endure whatever cancer may have in store.
Josephine Brady was Cavan County Librarian for more than two decades. The Breath of Consolation: Finding Solace in Cancer Literature is her first book
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