Hazel McHaffie

One True Thing

One True Thing

Early May it may be, but summer has arrived with a vengeance in my neck of the woods, so I seized the opportunity and took a fresh book into the garden to soak up the vitamins. One True Thing by Anne Quindlen. It’s about mercy killing so very much in my field of interest; just the ticket, then. Hmmm. I note that it was published in 2011 so I’m not sure why it’s taken so long to come to my attention. Anyway …

One True ThingWe know from the outset that Ellen Gulden is arrested and sent to jail accused of willfully killing her terminally ill mother, Kate. We also know that she didn’t do it. First person narrative: ‘I only wished I had.

Ellen is a journalist (like Quindlen) living an independent life when her mother is diagnosed with untreatable cancer. Under pressure from her father, she returns home to help look after her, resentful that her Professor-of-English father sees no need to give up his life, annoyed with herself that she still seeks his approval. Nor is he the one to offer bail to free her while the case is prepared; her erstwhile English teacher not only does that but offers her sanctuary too.

Caring for her mother isn’t any easier than Ellen anticipated. Kate Gulden’s deterioration is swift and brutal; the author doesn’t skimp on the unsavoury detail. She has to take large doses of morphine to deal with the pain. When the oncologist orders an autopsy, no one questions the means – the morphine was there in large doses, legitimately supplied by the visiting nurse. And the odds seem stacked against Ellen. It’s common knowledge that she is in favour of mercy killing; her prize-winning schoolgirl essay is trumpeted far and wide in the press. Plus she was the last person to see Kate alive. And she wanted this phase to be over, to get back to her old life; plenty of people can and do give testament to that. The evidence appears damning.

So, if Ellen didn’t administer the overdose, who did? And that’s what the book explores. Ellen herself is pretty sure she knows, but I’m not going to spoil it for you by giving away any more of the plot.

However, the book offers more that a whodunnit. It challenges the reader with some profound thoughts.

We cry to give voice to our pain.’

‘It’s so much easier to know just how you feel about things, what you believe, when you’re writing it on paper than when you really have to do anything about it or live with it.’

‘And knowing I could have killed her was nothing compared to knowing I could not save her.’

‘When your mother’s gone, you’ve lost your past. It’s so much more than love. Even when there’s no love, it’s so much more than anything else in your life.’

Would I have ended that awful pain, indignity and suffering if someone I loved begged me to help?

Oh and I loved this sentence: ‘My father’s regular features had lost flesh in some places, sagged in others, his rather thin mouth becoming more of a liability as the parentheses of middle age appeared around it.’

So no new arguments for me personally, but a very readable rehearsal of the old ones.

 

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