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Beyond the High Blue Air: A Memoir

Beyond the High Blue Air: A Memoir

by Lu Spinney (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2016

    $3.25
Synopsis

Aged just 29, gifted, athletic and loved, Lu Spinney's son Miles was on the brink of a brilliant future. Then a snowboarding accident changed everything. He suffered a devastating head injury and was left in a coma.

With unflinching honesty, Lu has written a passionate, urgent account of the years following Miles's accident, revealing his existence imprisoned in a limbo of fluctuating consciousness, at times agonizingly aware of his predicament. Beyond the High Blue Air explores the nature of self when all means of communication are lost, the anguish of witnessing Miles's suffering and the slow-dawning recognition by his family that, though Miles had been prevented from dying, he had not been brought back to a meaningful life. Beyond the High Blue Air is a bold, raw, courageous memoir: a testament to the fierce power of maternal love.

$3.25

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 240
 Edition: Main
 Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 05 May 2016
ISBN 10: 1782398872
ISBN 13: 9781782398875
Book Overview: This searingly honest, beautifully crafted memoir is a testament to the fierce power of maternal love.

Media Reviews
My heart is being ripped out by Beyond the High Blue Air ... It's a devastating, important memoir that fills me with love for the author, Miles and his siblings. -- Cathy Rentzenbrink
Lu Spinney has a tragic story to tell. The circumstances are unique. But what she expresses - disbelief, hope, anger, dismay - is universal. And the ethical questions she raises are vitally important. Most important, she writes beautifully. -- Blake Morrison
This profoundly moving and grippingly readable book brings to mind The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby. * The Sunday Times *
Impossible to read this eloquent, heart-breakingly well-written record of a mother's loss without realising that the people you love are all also standing on the precipice edge Lu Spinney describes so well. -- Francis Spufford
This book is a work of the highest literary skill and heroic courage born out of what for most would be unendurable, and wholly silencing, maternal pain. To read it is to feel, sympathetically, both that pain and admiration for the woman who has written so eloquently through it. -- John Sutherland
Beautifully written... What is striking and remarkable about this is how movingly Spinney manages to get insider her son's mind... Highly recommended * The Bookseller *
A courageous story... a tribute to maternal strength, understanding and love that forces us to question our preconceived ideas about humanity. * Literary Review *
This unflinching look at what happens when death is prevented but life is not worth living is heartbreaking and important. * Stylist *
This is not an easy book. Spinney's eye is unflinching and she spares us nothing in this increasingly hopeless tale... Doctors and lawyers need to read this book and think about the impact of unsuccessful life-saving interventions... we have no plan of what to do with bodies that house damaged brains, or how to cope with the philosophical and emotional difficulties inherent in caring for someone who is there but not there. -- Cathy Rentzenbrink * The Sunday Times *
Rivetingly written * The Sunday Times *
Author Bio
Lu Spinney was born in Cape Town and spent her childhood on a farm in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal, later moving with her family to the Indian Ocean coast north of Durban. After university, she left South Africa to live in Nice and Paris, before settling in London.