The Art of Caregiving in Fiction, Film, and Memoir

The reassuring, vaguely psychedelic, pastel-blue clouds on the cover of this book little prepared me for the emotional shock and awe I experienced reading much of the text ... Berman has produced an honest and richly nuanced text. He convincingly describes how literature acts as a form of simulation, through which our receptivity to emotion is heightened by placing ourselves in the situations of characters. As a result, we become susceptible to ‘being infected’ by emotions such as grief, shame, disgust and guilt ... This is an important text that deserves a strong and engaged readership. * International Journal of Care and Caring *
Berman’s book is an engaging read, from which we emerge with a powerful sense of caregiving as a fundamental human experience; one which is, or will almost certainly be, our business. His study constitutes a profound meditation on human interdependency and vulnerability. It is an extraordinary example of what we can learn from the creative arts and from work in the humanities about ageing and care. -- Shirley Jordan, Newcastle University * Age, Culture, Humanities *
No stranger to caregiving in illness, Jeffrey Berman, an outstandingly gifted teacher, scholar and writer, fulfills his inspiration through close readings of several art forms, to give his reader a living exposure to the difficult feelings, intricate attitudes and transforming relationships among those who offer aid during another person’s demise. We range from the tenderness and exasperation of John Bayley’s “Elegy for Iris” during her Alzheimer’s, akin to “Sisyphus pushing his rock up a mountain”; to the bitter despair of Wharton’s characters in Ethan Frome; to the minutiae of human death in Tolstoy; to the merger of nurse and nursed in Ingmar’s “Persona” or the “violence of euthanasia” in Haneke’s “Amour,” or the ethics of Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal.” The text provides emotional narratives of the creators’ involvement with their stories as well. This is a deeply satisfying book. It confronts eloquently, with compassion and complexity end-of-life issues that few dare contemplate so openly and with such courage and range. * Rosemary H. Balsam, F.R.C.Psych (London); Assoc. Clinical Prof of Psychiatry, Yale Medical School; winner 2018 Sigourney Award for Psychoanalytic Advancement. *