A Very Easy Death

Long considered one of Simone de Beauvoir's masterpieces, A Very Easy Death is a profoundly affecting, day-by-day recounting of her mother's final days after she is hospitalized following a fall. Though a devout Catholic, her faith is subsumed by her terror of death, and as her body fails, she clings to life with fierce, primal desperation. In depicting her mother's refusal to `go gentle' while her autonomy and dignity are taken from her, Simone de Beauvoir `shows the power of compassion when it is allied with acute intelligence' (Sunday Telegraph). Powerful, touching and sometimes shocking, this is an end-of-life account that no reader is likely to forget.