"The End of Your Life Book Club" by Will Schwalbe. I started reading this novel after it caught my attention in the library's three day, book rental shelf. Like most book lovers, I am part of a book club( I admit this) and my book club has been meeting once a month for the last ten years, albeit, I have only been a member for, four years. Either way, this novel was a definite hit home for me!Author, Will Schwalbe has been working in publishing for 21 years, and it was Schwalbe's admittance to his 73-year-old mother that he had not read a book on her list which would begin this two member book club
"Crossing to Safety" was the book on his mother's list. For which she exclaimed "I'll give you my copy" Schwalbe was getting David Halbersam's book on the Korean war ready for publication but he found time to meet his mother while she was in the hospital dying from cancer. There we have it "The End of Your Life Book Club."
Mary Anne's, Schwalbe's mother had done many accomplishing things in her seventy three years old life span, for which Schwalbe talks about admirably. His mom helped to establish libraries in Afghanistan. She went there in 1995, going across the Khyber pass from Pakistan to report on the condition of refugees. She went back to Afghanistan 9 times for the women's commission on the international rescue committee (the mothers keeps in contact with all the refugees she has met in Afghanistan).
"My mother was always introducing, scheduling, weighing in, guiding advising and counseling" says Schwalbe. He connects this with the fact that, his mother had taken a job at Harvard and Radcliffe University and was appointed associate dean of admission and Financial aide.
One funny story Schwalbe shares about his mother's career at Harvard is when she received a fortune cookie from an eager student awaiting admission in to the college and the fortune cookie read "You will admit Bella Wong"-the daughter of the local Chinese restaurant owner.
Mary Anne would later work at Cambridge University for which Schwalbe comments that during Thanksgiving "we invited anyone we knew who lived afar away and couldn't get home, we often had Iranian and Pakistani students come...perhaps this is where my mothers interest in the region began".
