THE BRIGHT HOUR A Memoir of Living and Dying

THE BRIGHT HOUR is a thing of beauty. Nina Riggs is honest and profoundly human as she comes to terms with life with terminal cancer and death. Narrator Cassandra Campbell is just perfect. She matches Riggs's emotions at every stage, and her lovely smooth voice has a bittersweet quality. The memoir manages to be both entertaining and heartbreaking as Riggs considers her family medical history (about the worst lottery ticket ever), loses her mother to multiple myeloma, reminisces about meeting her husband in a graveyard, and endures brutal treatments that bring no cure. She is funny, too--she can't seem to decide which couch to buy, her widowed father starts riding a motorcycle, and she plans post-death emails to her sons if they ever view pornography on the internet. The short afterword from Riggs's husband is narrated by Kirby Heyborne. It feels like losing a beautiful friend when it's over. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2017]