Review: Death and the Author - David Ellis
The Oxford University Press website helpfully gives a list of potential readers of their books and in the case of Death and the Author, the expectation is as follows:
a. Anyone with a interest in D. H. Lawrence;
b. anyone interested in exploring what it is like to have a disease for which there is no cure,
c. the appeal of alternative medicine,
d. the temptation of suicide for the terminally ill,
e. the diminishing role of religion in modern life,
f. the institution of famous last words, or
g. the consequences of dying intestate
I suspect this covers quite a large proportion of people in one way or another and in my case I tick the boxes on quite a few of those. Anyway, I came to this book after reading a very favourable review by William Palmer in this month's Literary Review, and I was not disappointed.
Although this book focuses primarily on D H Lawrence and his experience of tuberculosis, David Ellis uses this platform to explore a wide range of death-related topics. We learn much about the impact of T.B. on people before strepotmycin conquered the illness once and for all. Lawrence for example spent most of his adult life in battle with the disease and his last few years were ruined for him by the hacking coughs, the fevers and the accompanying debilitation which turned his nights into a hideous torment. It is only amazing that he was able to continue to work so hard throughout this period, and this was only because when urged to rest, he found his mind relentlessly thinking and planning.
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At a time when the only media references to Moslems seem to be negative, it is refreshing to read this amusing account of a Pakistani boy growing up in London and dealing with life as an immigrant. Other readers have suggested that this book bears comparison with Sue Towsend’s Adrian Mole, but this is largely because like Adrian, Asad recounts his journey through adoloscence during which he falls in love with various unattainable girls and suffers the usual episodes of teenage angst. Asad was a serious little boy who struggled to understand why he was “different” to his English-born friends, and he writes touchingly of the sticks and stones that came his way at school and in the neighbourhood he lived in.
I do not usually read family sagas, but was drawn to 
