A View of the Ocean

Synopsis

Amazon.com Guest Review: Anne Rice

Anne Rice is the bestselling author of over 25 books, including the enormously popular Vampire Chronicles, the Mayfair Witches series, and Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt: A Novel. Her latest effort, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, is scheduled to be published in March 2008.

A View of the Ocean:

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I read this memoir in one sitting. I'm at a loss to convey the scope of its beauty and its power. It's the story of a famous author's love for his parents, and particularly for his mother. Both the author and the mother lived through the horrors of World War II, and genocidal nightmares that will haunt us forever. But the book is not about that. It is about the mother's death from cancer and her son's desperate efforts to care for her, to protect her, to somehow survive her loss and find meaning in it. And meaning there is in every page of this story. At times it is excruciating to read, but it never stops being beautiful. And at the end we experience the resolution and the insight that make the book a triumph. The author, in focusing on his mother's illness, has perhaps made us all the more aware of the horrors of the War in that he has shown us that every single death is a tragedy from which the survivors must learn in order to go on living. This is a book to give to those who have suffered a personal loss. It's a book to give to those who will inevitably face the illness of a loved one. It's a book to treasure for its powerful and eloquent language, for its profound truths, and for its ultimately affirming wisdom. I wish I could describe it better. Read it. Share it with others.