Linda Davey, a former ballet dancer, lawyer, literary agent, and editorial board member of Coach House Press, was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer in the spring of 1999 and died a year later. During his wife’s harrowing illness, poet and professor Frank Davey began a journal to record the gradual disintegration of his partner’s physical and emotional independence. From the alarm at first noticing symptoms to the radiation and chemotherapy to the inevitable end, Davey reveals how this particular life wound down and stopped.

Linda is not an easy subject. Fiercely independent and unwilling to show any need, she was adamant about keeping her illness secret from family and friends as long as possible. Davey begins his journal in a self-conscious and tenuous voice; the writing itself, by acknowledging Linda’s illness, becomes a subversive and secretive act, a form of therapy rather than expression. In one entry, Davey poignantly
reflects that by losing his wife he is losing the one person in the world who understands his sense of humour and “gets” all his literary allusions and puns. Davey also describes the progress, setbacks, and dead-ends of the ailing Ontario health-care system.

The writing gradually acquires a more refined and poetic cast as Davey accepts the inevitable and reflects on his years spent with a remarkable woman. Throughout, Davey maintains an emotional distance that respects Linda’s complex and intelligent personality without denying its overwhelming presence.

Occasional passages were obviously written after Linda died and then inserted into the text. For example, early in Linda’s treatment, when there is still hope for recovery, Davey writes, “It was the last time she would ever drive.” One wishes that Davey had excised such foreshadowing, as it takes away from the journal’s immediacy. These small irregularities are few, though, and do not undermine a haunting depiction of a private world losing one of its most cherished citizens.