Harrowing and devastating account of a daughter watching her mother die of cancer. I wish I had read this earlier but I honestly just couldn't. I'm surprised I was able to push through this time, it was very much like reliving the trauma, and Beauvoir writes so lucidly about the trauma undergone by the family and the patient during cancer treatment. I don't know why I was so surprised at the parallels between this account and my experience, but I was expecting it to be a bit more alien than it was. It was just too much, too real, to visceral, too made of up the same stuff from my memories. The imagery which was staggering enough already was doubly horrific because I had memories to call back on and slip into place. It's close to a masterpiece, I only wish it were thicker and filled with denser reflection on the relationship between Beauvoir and her mother. I'm glad I finally got around to reading it. I wish it were better known. I feel like it should be a seminal text in many departments: philosophy, literature, gender studies. It's truly an incredible text.