131st book of 2023.

There are some things about Beauvoir's life that I don't like, of course, but this was a skilled piece of writing regarding the death of her mother. There's a sentence in it that goes something like, 'I was beginning to grow fond of this dying woman', which has been floating about in my head in the week since I read it. Martin Amis once said, 'Parents teach us how to die', and I've always found that poignant. When I quoted it once to my father he scoffed, 'You die whether you have parents or not,' he argued, and I supposed that was true, too.