§An Irish Times Book of the Year 2023
'An extraordinary achievement' Mary Gaitskill
'In the hands of a maestro, less can be so much more' Independent
Cheri has been living with cancer for many years. Now, she is dying. As she navigates the final weeks of her life, and takes charge of the manner of her death, she is flooded with childhood memories, and returns to the present with a renewed appreciation for the brilliance of life around her: the autumn has never been so beautiful, her daughters never as radiant. Brave, incredibly strong and deeply loved, Cheri makes one last nerve-wracking journey across the country with her girls and her friends, knowing relief waits welcoming as a frozen lake on the other side.
A masterpiece of fiction and memory, Cheri is a heart-breaking but glorious celebration of all the moments of beauty and pain that make an individual life, right up until its very last moments.
'An extraordinary achievement' Mary Gaitskill
'In the hands of a maestro, less can be so much more' Independent
Cheri has been living with cancer for many years. Now, she is dying. As she navigates the final weeks of her life, and takes charge of the manner of her death, she is flooded with childhood memories, and returns to the present with a renewed appreciation for the brilliance of life around her: the autumn has never been so beautiful, her daughters never as radiant. Brave, incredibly strong and deeply loved, Cheri makes one last nerve-wracking journey across the country with her girls and her friends, knowing relief waits welcoming as a frozen lake on the other side.
A masterpiece of fiction and memory, Cheri is a heart-breaking but glorious celebration of all the moments of beauty and pain that make an individual life, right up until its very last moments.
Cheri is richly packed. The details are laid before the reader with a simplicity that feels like grace. Beard's vocabulary is luminous ... Beard combines the lapidary chill of Joan Didion with the sense of a proper, lived humanity that you get from a writer like Grace Paley or Sigrid Nunez. She is good company. She connects. You should read her and not look away Anne Enright Guardian