Minus One: A Correspondence

by Maggie Thompson

Minus One is an account of one man's coming-to-terms with his own mortality and the specter of separating from those he loves. It is a buoyant story of friendship chronicled through the observations of thirty-eight people in an exchange of e-mail. With surprising humor the letters capture the anxiety of good-byes while reflecting the wisdom that graces the ordeal of conscious dying. -------------------- "If Tuesdays with Morrie offers instruction...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1598581392
• ISBN13: 9781598581393
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Living while dying

My wife died a year ago after a 2 year struggle with ovarian cancer. Maggie Thompson and her friends capture the challenge of continuing to live while dying. She catches the intensity of intimacy that comes from caregiving for a loved one facing a painful, ugly death. It is a nightmare experience, but the relationship also has moments of incredible beauty. The assorted writers run the gamut from the lyrically elegiac to the locker-room-and-sports-bar emotional illiteracy suffered by so many American men, the range that one must cope with during such a process. Dying is a process, an experience of life, a foreshortening and intensifying of the journey we all travel every day. Minus One is also an implicit condemnation of American medicine. It is astonishing how much of the time there seemed to be no on in charge of the dying man's medical care. And when they were in charge, the patient seemed less important than the disease. Even after it was perfectly clear that he could not recover, the medical people carried on making sure that he didn't take enough pain killer to kill him rather than doing all possible to make him comfortable. There is a sharp change once the hospice physician takes charge with the sole mission of keeping him comfortable. The ultimate insult, of course, is that during the illness they had to depend on the financial support of friends, and there is the stated assumption that the widow will, of course, file for bankruptcy. The system sucks, but the people are fine. Hospice workers are angels--tough angels.

An Important Book

This was a wonderful book! I found such beauty in the letters from family and friends and felt encouraged to face my own challenges knowing that people are so willing to reach out in times of need. There is great wisdom & bravery here, as well as humor and tears. "Minus One" is an amazing story of the enduring strength of love. I absolutely loved all the correspondents and felt as if I'd come to know each one. I would really encourage everyone to buy this book and share it with everyone in their lives.

Minus One - a Big Plus

Minus One seized me from the opening page and held me in its grip to the powerful conclusion. The experience of reading it was visceral and electrifying. Maggie Thompson gives words to the unthinkable as she documents through corresondence the slow and arduous loss of her husband Richard to cancer. The narrative pulls the reader into the time and space of a condensed life, and the amazing exerience of intensified life and meaning of one persons existence in the context of the dying process. Thompson portrays with exquisite sensitivity the experience of love and attaachement and the ordeal of loss and separation. As a psychotherapist and witness to people confronted with the death of people they love, I see this book as an invaluable guide and support. In describing with searing honesty the day by day personal experience of losing a soul mate, it reveals the capacity to face unimaginable loss yet maintain ones humanity. This book gives a very human response to ultimate questions. How does one let go of life? How does one let go of those they love?

five GOLD stars

Explorer's and Carole's words eloquently express my own thoughts and feelings about "Minus One." I could not put it down! I echo one reviewer who said: ". . . never read anything like it. I got up from the couch only once - to get a box of Kleenex. Laughed as much as I cried . . . one of the best love stories ever."

Deeply engaging

Make sure you don't have any pressing apointments when you begin to read this book, because it's very difficult to put down. Minus One is a compilation of emails sent by various friends and family of a man who has been diagnosed with cancer, so it is written by many different people. One can understand what an extraordinary person Richard Thompson was through these emails, as well as his own responses. One also gets to know a constellation of literate, smart, compassionate, affectionate, creative and humorous people who have been in Richard's life. This book should be mandatory reading, especially for younger, healthy adults. It's a piercing window into the values of the heart which, in the end, count the most in this life.