Reviews

Powerful...a miracle
*New York Times*

In its emphasis on the work of living, suffering, and loving, this is a masterpiece of the autobiographer's art, intense and rationally decorous at the same time
*Edward Said*

Extraordinarily beautiful
*Olivia Laing*

Magnificent...Makes whatever else has been written on the deepest issues of human life by the philosophers of our time seem intolerably abstract and even frivolous
*Arthur Danto*

This small book contains multitudes...It provokes, inspires, and illuminates more profoundly than many a bulky volume, and it delivers what its title promises, a new allegory about love
*London Review of Books*

Rich, satisfying, desirable ... I struggle to think of a finer, more rewarding short autobiography than this
*Guardian*

The philosopher's laconic, lyrical memoir displays an unsettling yet wholly inspirational vigour in the face of life-threatening disease
*Guardian*

This is not a pastel reverie, but a work in which the author, an English philosopher, feminist, and Marxist, not only bares her soul but carefully dissects it...Rose develops by contrast her notion of love's work: the obligation to go on thinking and caring in spite of the certainty of physical and moral defeat. Gillian Rose died shortly after completing this rigorous and lyrical book
*Boston Review*

Sears the page it occupies
*Philadelphia Inquirer*

This beautiful memoir comes right from a genuinely thoughtful heart. It is good to find that philosophizing can offer its age-old consolations so present tensely
*Elisabeth Young-Bruehl*