It’s Not Yet Dark
On sale
5th June 2014
Price: £12.99
Genre
In 2008, Simon Fitzmaurice was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (mnd). He was given four years to live.
In 2010, in a state of lung-function collapse, Simon knew with crystal clarity that now was not his time to die. Against all prevailing medical opinion, he chose to ventilate in order to stay alive.
Here, the young filmmaker, a husband and father of five small children draws us deeply into his inner world. Told in simply expressed and beautifully stark prose – in the vein of such memoirs as Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – the result is an astonishing journey into a life which, though brutally compromised, is lived more fully and in the moment than most, revealing at its core the power of love its most potent.
Written using an eye-gaze computer, It’s Not Yet Dark is an unforgettable book about relationships and family, about what connects and separates us as people and, ultimately, about what it means to be alive.
In 2010, in a state of lung-function collapse, Simon knew with crystal clarity that now was not his time to die. Against all prevailing medical opinion, he chose to ventilate in order to stay alive.
Here, the young filmmaker, a husband and father of five small children draws us deeply into his inner world. Told in simply expressed and beautifully stark prose – in the vein of such memoirs as Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – the result is an astonishing journey into a life which, though brutally compromised, is lived more fully and in the moment than most, revealing at its core the power of love its most potent.
Written using an eye-gaze computer, It’s Not Yet Dark is an unforgettable book about relationships and family, about what connects and separates us as people and, ultimately, about what it means to be alive.
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Reviews
Beautifully written...utterly life-affirming
If you are hungry for truth and beauty, read this book
Crystal clear, radiating all the things that we aspire toward. A beautiful love story
Sparsely and beautifully written...the human spirit and will to live shines out of these pages...By the time you reach the end of this book, with tears of admiration, sadness and frustration in your eyes, the question is no longer why would you want to live...but how could you not
Part memoir, part stark document of the way [Simon] and his family have dealt with motor neuron disease, and part fierce celebration of being alive, It's Not Yet Dark is powerful, gripping and compelling
[A] gripping, affecting, sometimes funny read by a natural-born storyteller with something to say about the weight and the value of a life...If you need a story of courage, of heart, of coming back for more, of love and struggle and the power of both, It's Not Yet Dark could be the elusive thing you're after'
[It's Not Yet Dark is] a demonstration of a will to live that is breathtaking...There's a rhythm of immediacy that feels like a still-beating heart whose strength is beyond admirable. It is a work of documentary poetry...an extraordinary read