Michael Kimball - How Much Of Us There Was

From the moment we first come to understand its dark finality to the day it greets us at the door, death shadows everything we do in our ultimately doomed race against time­ – unless you subscribe to the idea of cryogenics, anyway. Author Michael Kimball, who has chronicled the lives of many strangers through his ongoing biographical project, Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story, tackles this bleak province in his latest novel, How Much Of Us There Was.

The book opens with an elderly man’s somewhat bewildered yet methodically reported account of how he woke up one morning to find his wife had stopped breathing. Unable to wake her, he calls for an ambulance. It’s the beginning of the novel, but really it’s the beginning of the end for Kimball’s protagonist. Because although the man’s wife makes it to the hospital and survives, it becomes clear in the ensuing pages that this aged couple doesn’t have much time left. Meanwhile, a parallel account by the couple’s grandson explores a young man’s initial brushes with and reactions to the fleeting nature of life.

Kimball is an amazingly empathetic writer who fortunately doesn’t allow his oft-depressing subject matter to drift into the maudlin province of Nicholas Sparks (or worse). As husband and wife huddle together and their bodies quickly fail, one after the other, you can feel the quiet desperation to cherish every last minute through the author’s quietly powerful, deliberately unflowery rendering. Kimball understands that it’s no easier to let go when you’re 90 than when you’re 30, and that’s a good thing. Otherwise, what’s the point?

How Much Of Us There Was is out now, HarperCollins, RRP $22.95

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