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Review
'I can't imagine a finer book for a writer to go out on - An absolutely extraordinary achievement' Front Row 'Few books have ever been more immediate, more rooted in the present tense' Mail on Sunday 'The effortless, rambling style he's accidentally found himself cultivating here reaches its zenith - He finishes not in ugly mid-sentence but clearly, cleanly, perfectly. A casually perfect but unexpectedly painful early full stop to a life and a mind for which we are immeasurably richer' Observer 'His beautifully written, addictively readable, unsparingly honest journals are his greatest achievement - and will survive the test of time' Telegraph 'Those many readers who have enjoyed the three previous volumes of The Smoking Diaries will find this one every bit as compelling: less funny, despite frequent shafts of wit, considerably more moving' Scotsman 'Mordantly funny, unsparing of himself and others, desperately brave, it is both compulsive and agonising to read' Sunday Telegraph An Evening Standard 'Best Book of 2008': 'Wittily digressive, deeply humane and excruciatingly honest' 'An effortlessly astonishing piece of writing that established Gray without a doubt among the great autobiographers' Literary Review
Review
`Mordantly funny, unsparing of himself and others, desperately brave, it is both compulsive and agonising to read'
--This text refers to the
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This has to be one of the best books I have ever read. Funny, poignant and very real. I could feel the heat of the sun and the chapel wall he describes against my back. What a writer. What a loss
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Coda is the last of Simon Gray's four Smoking Diaries. I enjoyed all of them but, over the few years that Gray wrote his rambling, amusing and philosophical diaries/biography, my husband, who'd bought me the first of them, had cancer and died. At the end of the third diary, Simon Gray is also told he has terminal cancer. So it was with some trepidation that I approached the fourth as he goes through thinking about death, his wife and family, and his various doctors with their different approaches to his emotional state. He still managed to make me laugh out loud and still tackled difficult subjects and thoughts with his usual wonderful honesty. In particular I found it so useful in letting me realise what my husband was thinking over his last year - both of them no longer drinking; both smoking to the end. Men in particular are not much good at speaking about what they're feeling and it was wonderful that Simon Gray had his natural means of getting down his thoughts. This sounds a very personal review, but actually most of us are going to lose someone close and certainly we're all going to face death, so I'd say this is a book that everyone should read. It's not depressing, just illuminating, uplifting and witty.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Simon Gray wrote wonderfully. His digressions give one the impression that one is listening in to his unfiltered interior monologue. He is wise and witty and does not spare the doctors who dealt with him so insensitively. He castigates the consultant who told him he had a year to live for taking that year away from him. His autobiographical writings are a wonderful legacy.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hypnotised by Ordinariness
Simon Gray's diaries have a hypnotic effect that I can't really explain. The very ordinariness of their content makes them incredibly compelling. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Roger Risborough
Over so quickly,
In previous volumes of his diaries, there's an undercurrent of foreboding about Simon's smoking habit - much of the three volumes include his perspective on watching his friend... Read more
Published 21 months ago by L. Hennessy
A compelling read
This was, for me, one of those books where you open the parcel, skim the first page and then put aside whatever else you were planning to spend the evening doing because you cannot... Read more
Published on 21 Mar 2010 by lilysmum
A bittersweet goodby
If, like me, you've read all Simon Gray's earlier memoirs, you'll find this a bittersweet experience. Read more
Published on 8 Feb 2009 by J. Lamede
A moving finale to this fine series
This final volume, Coda, in Simon Gray's diaries will be warmly welcomed by anyone who has followed Gray's progress from The Smoking Diaries to The Last Cigarette, in which he... Read more
Published on 8 Jan 2009 by A Common Reader
Heart-rending and bittersweet
I enjoyed this book, even though the subject matter is dark and the overall tone of the book is rather melancholy. Read more
Published on 5 Nov 2008 by Julia
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