Book Review

The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett

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The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett by Annie Lyons, a Book Review by @BarbaraDelinsky #TheBrilliantLifeOfEudoraHoneysett #BookReview #reading

The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett is a charmer.

Straight away, we meet 85-year-old Eudora Honeysett, who is tired of life and wants to end it in a humane, peaceful, take-charge manner. But wait. If you think this book is about death, you are wrong. If you think it’s depressing, you are wrong as well. At the same time that she is making arrangements to end her life in a clinic in Switzerland, fate brings people into her life who give her pause.

Actually, what gives her pause is the joy that fate brings her. Eudora is curmudgeonly for a reason. She has a past. Little by little, as we learn about that past, we come to like her all the more. Likewise, little by little, as Eudora is forced into engaging with the people around her, she comes to like herself all the more.

Those people around her are wonderful. Oh yes, her new next-door neighbor, the 10-year-old Rose, is precocious beyond her years, but her exuberance is simply something Eudora can’t fight. Likewise the sweet messiness of Rose’s parents.  And the compassion of another neighbor, the recently-widowed Stan. And various people she meets at the “group” Stan cajoles her into attending with him. And even the assistance – resistance, truly – of Petra, her contact at the Swiss clinic. Oh, and then there’s Montgomery, Eudora’s cat, who sees many things before she does.

I listened to this book, and it’s read very well. I have no doubt that it holds up in print. It’s a wonderfully uplifting, heartfelt, humorous, thought-provoking tale.

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