Review: It's Not Yet Dark by Simon Fitzmaurice

Title: It's Not Yet Dark
Author: Simon Fitzmaurice
Format: ARC
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publish Date: August 1, 2017 (soon!)
Source: Publisher

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "In 2008, Simon Fitzmaurice was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (also known as ALS). He was given four years to live. In 2010, in a state of lung-function collapse, Simon knew with crystal clarity that now was not his time to die. Against all prevailing medical opinion, he chose to ventilate in order to stay alive. Here, the young filmmaker, a husband and father of five small children, draws us deeply into his inner world. Told in simply expressed and beautifully stark prose—in the vein of such memoirs as Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly—the result is an astonishing journey into a life which, though brutally compromised, is lived more fully and in the moment than most, revealing at its core the power of love its most potent. Written using an eye-gaze computer, It's Not Yet Dark is an unforgettable book about relationships and family, about what connects and separates us as people and, ultimately, about what it means to be alive."

My Two Cents:

"It's Not Yet Dark" is a memoir by Simon Fitzmaurice, a filmaker, father, and husband, who is struck down in the prime of his life by ALS. Even if we are relatively healthy, there is a chance that something could strike us like that without warning. It is a slim chance (luckily!!!) but there is still a chance. Most of us just don't go around thinking about things like that because it would drive us absolutely nuts. It's the fact that this book is so raw that makes it good and that makes it thought-provoking. This situation could happen to any of us.

Fitzmaurice walks us through his diagnosis and the disbelief that he originally has when he starts having issues. He blames it on his shoes at first because the idea that a healthy person like him could have a medical issue that makes it impossible to fully work his foot seems so strange and then things quickly seem to go from bad to worse.

Told in stark prose, this is a story of heartbreak and how you go on living when everything that is happening to you is fully out of your control. How do you embrace family and friends? How do you adapt and move forward? How do you form a new life when reality is so different than what you had anticipated? This book explores all of these topics and more in a really raw and real way. This book is relatively short but it packs a huge punch!