It goes without saying that chronic and terminal illness almost always has a devastating effect on those closest to the patient, particularly the immediate family. As if to support Tolstoy’s notion that “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” two new books chronicling long-term illness and loss have similar time-spans and storylines, but differ markedly in their approach and effect.

Requiem for My Brother, the new book by Marian Botsford Fraser, a veteran writer and broadcaster, chronicles her brother Dave’s nine-year struggle with multiple sclerosis, which ended with his death in the summer of 2001. Framed within an account of the day she and several family members spent on Lake Beaverhouse (the scene of many childhood memories) scattering Dave’s ashes and celebrating his life, the bulk of the book unfolds chronologically. From their close-knit childhood in the small mining town of Kirkland Lake to an adult relationship-building journey by canoe along the Coppermine River, Fraser deftly sketches the variable nature of relationships between siblings and within families.

That candour extends to Fraser’s frank description of the trials Dave faced over the course of his illness, and her own increasing role in his care. Fraser writes in a plainspoken, direct manner, with a minimum of flourish, an approach that allows the reader to experience a sense of the emotional impact of those years. We feel, for example, Dave’s excitement as he plans a millennial around-the-world cruise; when his plans begin to fall apart, we share his disappointment acutely.

While the descriptions of the day on Lake Beaverhouse occasionally tend toward the florid, negating much of their potential effect, Requiem for My Brother is, overall, a powerfully emotional work.

Heather Summerhayes Cariou was six years old when her younger sister Pam was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, which she referred to as “sixtyfive roses.” In the 1950s, CF sufferers weren’t expected to outlive their childhoods. The girls’ parents devoted themselves to her care, and to agitating for greater awareness and funding for treatment. Cariou’s father was the founding president of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation; both parents have been awarded the Order of Canada for their work. Pam survived for more than 20 years with CF, her illness shaping her family and the lives of her siblings.

In Sixtyfive Roses, Cariou, a former actress and first-time author, demonstrates a startling candour in her account not only of her sister’s suffering, but of her own adolescent insufferableness. The book – and her life – is filled with petty temper tantrums and attempts to wrest attention from her sister. While these passages paint the author in a far from flattering light, they underscore the overall honesty of the work, which deals frankly with the physical and emotional rollercoaster of living with, and alongside, terminal illness.

It is appropriate that Sixtyfive Roses begins with an endorsement from Céline Dion: not only is Dion a “celebrity patron” for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, but the book actually resembles a Dion power ballad in a number of ways, few of them positive. The book is too often overwritten (rare is the noun lacking an adjective) and overwrought. Opening with Cariou’s deathbed promise to her sister to tell her story, Cariou presses the emotional dimension of her writing to its very limit, and beyond. Too often, the amplified quality of the prose makes an honest emotional response difficult, if not impossible. That’s unfortunate, for when Cariou allows her story to stand on its own, relatively free of embellishment, Sixtyfive Roses is compelling, candid, and heartbreaking.