Gift of Time

When his mother Joan was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Rory MacLean and his wife Katrin took her into their home. For five months, as their life fragmented and turned inward, they fought both to resist and to accept the inevitable. Each gave vent to their emotions in different ways, but all three kept a diary.

Heartbreakingly honest and deeply moving, Gift of Time is the story of those days, in the words of a son, his wife and his mother. Woven together into a poignant meditation on life and death, they illuminate the courage and dignity of one woman who confronted what we all must face. Threaded through with wisdom and guilt, anger and acceptance, the story is punctuated by a family wedding and the hope of new life, by bin-bags of old letters and books rediscovered, by the end of winter and the first signs of spring.

Powerful, raw and urgent, this slender volume is above all a celebration of life. Capturing every moment of beauty and pain it acknowledges that what survives all of us is love.

Praise for Rory MacLean’s previous titles:

Stalin’s Nose: ‘The most extraordinary debut in travel writing since In Patagonia. A dark, sardonic and brilliant book which grows in stature with every page’ William Dalrymple

‘A surreal masterpiece’ Colin Thubron

The Oatmeal Ark: ‘One of the most original and innovative travel books for years.’ Alexander Frater

‘A truly astonishing performance’ Jan Morris

‘Such a book as this rather marvellously explains why literature still lives.’ John Fowles

Under the Dragon: ‘I cannot imagine a better book on the beauty and terror of Burma. Read it. Read it. Read it.’ Fergal Keane

‘It will make you cry and it will give you hope. … It is astonishingly good.’ Jeanette Winterson.

Magic Bus: ‘A disturbing, gripping and intensely passionate story’ Esther Freud.