“Life and death in close focus, side by side.”

-Delia Ephron

I received an advanced reading copy of this book, lost it, then found it again recently — a confluence, one might say, with the events of the book itself.

In Left on Tenth, Delia Ephron takes you on her roller coaster of a journey of falling in love and being diagnosed with leukemia in her 70s. While you know that Delia survives to the end (to write this book, of course), you still feel the anxiety and fear and the wondering if she’ll make it. Facts are stated simply in a way that’s believable and powerful, and you get the sense by the end that things couldn’t have happened any other way.

I enjoyed reading the various emails and other messages that Delia and Peter sent and received throughout this time—it makes me hope that if I ever need them, I’ll have those kind of people in my life, and that I could be that person for someone else.

The only thing I occasionally found jarring throughout was some of the spoken dialogue. Many people sounded the same in speech as in writing, and perhaps that’s how the artistic upper echelon of the world speaks, but occasionally a phrase did make me pause.

Overall, though, Left on Tenth (love the double meaning of the title, by the way) was a wonderful read, and one I’m sure I’ll revisit in the future, if only to reread some of those letters and remind myself to believe in hope.