Every Single Minute by Hugo Hamilton

Every Single Minute

Hugo Hamilton

Una is spending her last days the way she wants on a city break with an old friend. Within the almost predictable genre of the ‘act of dying’ there are more surprising moments where big issues of family guilt surface. Deeply human perceptions arise from the trivia of the sightseeing trip to Berlin and the easy style overflows into poetic moods. A novel suffused with moments of tenderness and honesty.

Extract
What am I trying to say? I can give you a kind of summary of what I know, but it's nothing like meeting her, hearing her speak for herself. So maybe that's the missing clue? Her presence. A memoir is not a living person, no matter how true it is, that's what I'm trying to say. I know this goes against her opinion that everybody is the sum of their own story and people are nothing more than walking stories, but I don't know if putting together what she told me is ever going to match listening to her live, in her own voice.
Parallels
  • Last Orders by Graham Swift
  • Alice by Judith Hermann
  • Milwaukee by Bernice Rubens