Undying: A Love Story

by Michel Faber

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 144
Rating:

Synopsis:

How can you say goodbye to the love of your life?

In Undying Michel Faber honours the memory of his wife, who died after a six-year battle with cancer. Bright, tragic and candid, these poems are an exceptional chronicle of what it means to find the love of your life. And what it is like to have to say goodbye.

All I can do, in what remains of my brief time,
is mention, to whoever cares to listen,
that a woman once existed, who was kind
and beautiful and brave, and I will not forget
how the world was altered, beyond recognition,
when we met.

Michel Faber’s poetry collection, Undying: A Love Story, is composed of poems mostly written while his wife was dying and in the months after her death. It’s an intimate and pained portrait of a relationship and love that he idealises, and his grief is plain throughout the poems.

I didn’t love all of them, but as a collection, they do a lot — and there were definitely several that gave me serious pause.  There’s some vivid imagery and some lovely phrases, but most of all, there’s a lot of tenderness and appreciation of what the poet had, as well as grief at the passing. That more than the exact words is what sticks with me, as a reader.

Rating: 4/5