An ideal presence A novel

Argentinian writer Berti (The Imagined Land) offers a searching, humane account of a palliative care unit in Rouen, France, where he spent a "medico-literary" residency. The novel comprises short testimonies from doctors, nurses, aides, and social workers as they share their views of patients, some more responsive than others, all of whom are nearing their death. There are scenes of chilling frankness, as when a nursing aide says of the night shift: "Sometimes a patient will call and ask, in a child's voice, 'Leave the door open a bit, please.' That's not a good sign. No, never." There are also eccentrics who provide entertaining, if brief, company, like the South American calculating how many transfusions it will take for him to be "100 percent French by blood." Berti is excellent on how the work affects his subjects, who often can't avoid becoming personally invested. One volunteering violinist, for example, is stung when no one calls her to play for her music-loving patient "during her final throes." An essayistic tone dominates, causing the entries to bleed into one another, down to shared tics: "It's funny"; "It's funny to say"; "The really funny thing though." Nonetheless, the moments of quiet humor, grief, and grace make this oddly enlivening. (Sept.)

A series of vignettes from the perspectives of people who care for the dying. Inspired by his literary residency at a hospital in Rouen, France, Argentinian novelist Berti tells the lightly fictionalized stories of caretakers at a palliative-care center, portraying the complex and varied relationships between patients and caretakers and patients and their families as well as the intricate hierarchy that exists among the staff. There is no single narrative that runs through all the stories. Instead, the caretakers speak about what feels most relevant to them and their work: There's a nursing aid who cleans a child's stained teddy bear, a nurse who calls a patient's ex-lover on his behalf, and a volunteer who reads aloud the last few pages of a patient's beloved detective novel while the patient lies dead a few feet away. Despite the subject matter, Berti's prose feels neither maudlin nor macabre. Instead, his portrayal of patients at the height of vulnerability and the caretakers who "assist and accompany at the moment of death" is at once delicate, complex, and respectful, providing intimacy without being voyeuristic. And while no big answers to life's great questions of death and suffering are given, Berti's triumph is bringing us deep into a topic that even his characters admit isn't always comfortable: "Talking about death and suffering isn't within everyone's grasp. So I keep quiet. I protect them." Deeply affecting. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.