David Rieff is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and author of seven previous books. In this bracing memoir, he examines the painful and protracted last nine months in the life of his mother, Susan Sontag, the famous intellectual and author. In her essay "Illness as Metaphor," she had charted her citizenship in the country of the ill. After cheating death with two previous cancers, Sontag was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome or MDS, a terrible disease. Rieff recounts her many consultations with physicians and her decision to endure a punishing bone marrow transplant which ultimately failed.
Throughout this ordeal, Sontag remains "unreconciled to mortality." Her religion of reason helps her marshal all the resources she can to survive as she gathers more information on MDS and tries to fight it with "that steeliness of her will."
Rieff feels guilty about not telling his mother about the futility of her efforts but concludes "she was entitled to die her own death." He salutes her lust for life and notes: "If I had to choose one word to describe her way of being in the world it would be 'avidity.' There was nothing she did not want to see or do or try to know." He marvels at Sontag's energy as she pursues her passions for theatre, dance, and film. She wrote in a journal, "I'm sucking on a thousand straws." Rieff sees her childlike sense of wonder propelling her from one project to another.
But the strength of her hope and the power of her will cannot save her from the suffering and the pain of MDS. Sontag refuses religion and remains true to her rock solid atheism. Rieff laments her death as he stands at her grave in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. He recalls a passage from one of her journals: "In the valley of sorrow, spread your wings."
