3. Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About This Magnificent Life)
Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About This Magnificent Life)

Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About This Magnificent Life)

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newbury-library, , autobiographical, 2015, read-in-2022, non-fiction, 2015, all-time-favourites, favourites, nonfiction19, Nonfiction, Autobiography, Biography, Death, Biography Memoir, Family

Ambitious and talented, Kate Gross worked at Number 10 Downing Street for two British Prime Ministers whilst only in her twenties. At thirty, she was CEO of a charity working with fragile democracies in Africa. She had married 'the best looking man I've ever kissed' – and given birth to twin boys in 2008. The future was bright.

But aged 34, Kate was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. Now terminal, it is clear that she will die before her children finish primary school and probably before they reach the grand old age of 6.

She began to write as a gift to herself, a reminder that she could create even as her body tried to self-destruct. Written for those she loves,her book is not a conventional cancer memoir; nor is it filled with medical jargon or misery. Instead, it is Kate's powerful attempt to make sense of the woman who has emerged in this strange, lucid final chunk of life.

Kate should have been granted decades to say all that she says in these pages. Denied the chance to bore her children and grandchildren with stories when she is fat and old, she offers us all her thoughts on how to live; on the wonder to be found in the everyday; the importance of friendship and love; what it means to die before your time and how to fill your life with hope and joy even in the face of tragedy.

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Title:Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About This Magnificent Life)
Edition Language:English
ISBN:9780008103453
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    Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About This Magnificent Life) Reviews

  • Rebecca

    By the end of this clear-eyed, charming cancer memoir, I felt I knew Kate Gross as a dear friend. A high-flying British civil servant who worked with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and later helped Blair...

  • Nancy Hooley

    I read this book in one sitting last night and was incredibly inspired by the legacy Kate has left in writing this uplifting yet honest look at her heartbreaking situation; having to leave a husband a...

  • Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly

    The dedication of this book reads:“There are two copies of this book that matter. There are two pairs of eyes I imagine reading every word. There are two adult hands which I hope will hold a battere...

  • Charlie

    I love biographies and I love memoirs but this was different to most I had read before, perhaps because it doesn't quite fit in either of those categories. The book is cut into chapters, that more or ...

  • Carole Mills

    Not really sure how to describe this book. I enjoyed it immensely in parts and other parts went straight over my head! Obviously, a very sad & poignant story, but told in Kate's upbeat & off the wall ...

  • Connie

    I own this book. This book is devastating. In every imaginable way. Kate Gross is 34 when she is diagnosed with stage four cancer, she has two young kids aged 3, she is the CEO of a charity group, s...

  • Carolinemawer

    Like those (few) others not liking this book, I feel hesitant to criticise this bookBut surely, it was written for her family - especially her children. And why leave your children with bad memories?...

  • carole

    Kate Gross admits to being a control freak.without this attribute,she says herself this book would not have been possible.Her inspiration book is a legacy for her Knights as she calls her twin boys.Ha...

  • Lucy Lang

    This soul-searching memoir was not at the top of the Sunday Times reading list for nothing! I really enjoyed getting to know Kate Gross through the pages of her beautifully told story, which was a sad...

  • Angela Young

    This is a brave, honest, funny, heartbreaking and heavenly book ... essential reading for anyone who has a dying friend or relation for its suggestions about what to do and what not to do when we go t...