Now that I’ve written about nearly crying in a real life situation, it occurs to me that I am driven to tears by select books. This was driven home today because I was rereading one of three books that I know can do this to me consistently: Mark Sanderson‘s Wrong Rooms.
Wrong Rooms is an immensely powerful autobiographical love story. Mark, a gay Londoner, meets and falls in love with Drew, an Australian working in the UK. What is so particularly wonderful about the story is how close Mark and Drew became during their relationship-the trip to France, the cruise, and living together. What is so horribly heart wrenching and endearing about the story is that Drew comes down with cancer, his family visits from Australia, and Mark is compelled to uphold his promise to Drew. The promise was death with dignity-or at least Drew’s wish to not live beyond the point where there was no joy in life.
Mark suffocated his boyfriend.
The story brings me to tears.
I can distinctly recall the first time I read this book-it’s a relatively recent arrival to my shelves-I bought it in November whilst visiting Edinburgh, but didn’t read it until I was back in Amsterdam. I read it while suffering from a 4-hour bug and was lying in bed at my friend’s apartment hoping to feel better. I felt better, but was unable to put the book down. I read it from cover to cover in one afternoon and ended up crying. Naturally that was when the phone rang and I must have sounded incredibly depressed while on the phone.
For the record the other two books that can reliably make me cry have been on my shelves longer. Since picking it up while visiting Portland, Oregon, Judd Winick‘s Pedro and Me does the job-I cry when Pedro Zamora dies and I cry when Judd talks to Laura. The third book is Richard Bradford‘s Red Sky at Morning: at the penultimate moment I always invariably cry.
I guess it is a good thing that his name wasn’t Tom Ripley. At least he suffocated him for a good cause. I hope someone would be that caring if I ended up that way.
Have you seen Lifetime Companion yet? There’s an especially touching death scene in that.