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Undying: A Love Story

Michel Faber

4.33 · Rating details · 691 ratings · 134 reviews

How can you say goodbye to the love of your life?

In Undying Michel Faber honours the memory of his wife, who died after a six-year battle with cancer. Bright, tragic, candid and true, these poems are an exceptional chronicle of what it means to find the love of your life. And what it is like to have to say goodbye.

All I can do, in what remains of my brief time,
is mention, ...more

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Hardcover, 122 pages

Published July 7th 2016 by Canongate Books

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Feb 12, 2017 Ilse rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone who has a heart

Shelves: reviewed, poetry, 2017

Is it morbid or obscene to look at the subtly worded but harrowing pain of others? Like the Flemish poet Herman de Coninck (1944-1997) who wrote acerbically he won the Provincial poetry prize thanks to the death of his first wife (An, 1971) one can expect writers to resort to words when tragedy hits. Novelist Michel Faber turned to poetry to commemorate and deal with the loss of his wife Eva Youren to cancer in 2014. By writing this intimate and deeply courageous and moving recount on his though ...more

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May 10, 2016 Rebecca rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviewed-for-blog, requested-from-publisher, poetry, bereavement-memoirs

Today happens to be my ninth wedding anniversary. For Michel Faber, however, it marks a more somber occasion: two years since his wife, Eva, died of cancer. They met in 1988 and got to spend over 25 years together. It was a second marriage for Eva, a visual artist – a bohemian life full of travel and each working on their art, until a six-year battle with multiple myeloma (a cancer of the bone marrow) cut Eva down in her early fifties.

Faber’s new book, Undying: A Love Story, is a striking outpou ...more

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Jul 11, 2016 Laura Jones rated it it was amazing

Ignore the pessimism and skepticism of other Goodreads reviews if you want to read some hauntingly intimate and considered poetry on the universal theme of grief. Sure, it'll be a topic done to, um, death for many readers but that kind of attitude misses the point of the reason for the work existing: for Eva and Michel. Undying is for them and it's a brave decision for Faber to share it at all. Many times while reading it you wonder if you should be reading it, should be having such insight into ...more

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Jul 13, 2016 David Kenvyn rated it it was amazing

This book is extraordinary. It is Michel Faber's elegy for his wife, who died of cancer. In the Foreword he says that he is not a writer of poetry. Or rather that, before she died, it took him ages to write a poem that he considered to be acceptable. Then the need came upon him, and that need was to deal with loss, with grief, with bereavement. And so we have gained this remarkable series of poems, this poetic symphony to Eva, the love of his life, the love that will not die while he is alive.

Fi This book is extraordinary. It is Michel Faber's elegy for his wife, who died of cancer. In the Foreword he says that he is not a writer of poetry. Or rather that, before she died, it took him ages to write a poem that he considered to be acceptable. Then the need came upon him, and that need was to deal with loss, with grief, with bereavement. And so we have gained this remarkable series of poems, this poetic symphony to Eva, the love of his life, the love that will not die while he is alive.

First, to talk about the words. It is hard to believe that a word like myeloma, which sounds so mellifluous, describes something that is so deadly, but it does. It is difficult to understand that necrosis, so soft in the mouth, is fatal, but it is. It is not easy to understand that Thalimax and Dexamethasone are treatments to hold a killer disease at bay. And yet these words slip into the poetry, alongside the explanations of what they are and what they do. Because how else would we understand what is happening? How could we know?

And while he is introducing us to the horrors that lie behind these words, Michel Faber does not forget to remind us of the banalities of ordinary life - of the use of electric blankets, of the pleasure of eating in a Thai restaurant, of the clothes that we wear, even of the need to use the toilet. This is an account of a life ending, and no detail is too insignificant. It is an account of how his wife was stolen from him, of the suffering involved, of the grief caused, of the bereavement endured. And the grief comes in the daily tasks, such as opening a kitchen cupboard and finding some tamarind. It is things like this that are sharp reminders that she is no longer there.

Anyone who has had to deal with the death of a loved one will recognise what Michel Faber has been through. He takes us through all the emotions of bereavement: grief, bewilderment, anger, pain, confusion, survival. It is that last one that is the most difficult: the bereaved is still alive and their loved one is not.

This is not a eulogy. It is certainly not a hagiography. It is, I suppose, a celebration. But not in the limited way that the word is sometimes used at funerals.

I do not have the words. This book is extraordinary. You must read it. ...more

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Jul 11, 2016 Heather rated it really liked it

I'm generally failing to find the words for this, so I will say that I've been lucky enough by this point to see Michel read perhaps five, six poems from this by now, and it's in that pacing and air the rest of his collection was read. Don't Hesitate to Ask is a personal stand out. He's said it himself: this is not grief wrapped up in metaphor, this is a more direct view whose gaze some may not be able to hold. Undying handles the harsh, often brutal realities of illness, death and grief, all wh ...more

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Jul 18, 2016 Viktor Janiš rated it it was amazing

I am the Czech translator of this book. While I don't think it would be appropriate to review this book, since I am obviously biased, I took the liberty to translate a Facebook post of one of the people who read my translation of Michel's poem "Don't hesitate to ask". This status (by Jan P. Martínek) was written a day after the terrorist attack in Brussels:
"Yesterday several people shared the comment of a member of the Block against Islam, the one with underlined sentence about how the person in I am the Czech translator of this book. While I don't think it would be appropriate to review this book, since I am obviously biased, I took the liberty to translate a Facebook post of one of the people who read my translation of Michel's poem "Don't hesitate to ask". This status (by Jan P. Martínek) was written a day after the terrorist attack in Brussels:
"Yesterday several people shared the comment of a member of the Block against Islam, the one with underlined sentence about how the person in question allegedly prays for a big terrorist attack. Leaving aside the fact that we should not give space to such people at all and should not help spread such rants, I confess that this rubbish unfortunately left a lasting impression on me.
In a traffic jam this morning brought about by the understandable unpopularity of the Brussels underground, I remembered this instructive text and told my wife about it. Since we didn’t have time earlier and since our car drove at a walking pace, she told me how the situation looks like at her work, after those attacks.
At the time of the explosion at the Maalbek Metro station, some of her colleagues were already at work. They felt how the whole of the building shook and immediately feared the worst (I myself know exactly what I would think about at such a moment). Guards cluelessly ran in front of the building, then locked it and only later they let a few insistent individuals go out for lunch. Those people then passed the dead, injured and crying. On their way to Kentucky Fried Chicken.
One of my colleagues sat in the last carriage of the underground train. That train. Nothing happened to her. Scorched and shaken, she came to our office, quickly checked who arrived and started to call the rest who didn’t come. Another colleague of mine is now at the hospital, because she is now deaf in one ear because of the explosion. Several of those who survived lie at the same ward, with burns everywhere from their waist up. It must have been immense heat.
During this family idyll, I remembered the poem that Viktor translated and shared the day before yesterday. Let me just note that I have never been a great fan of poetry. Either I automatically set it to music in my head, or I am just not interested. I should work on it, but I have been saying that for years. However, I decided to retell my wife this free verse poem.
To my surprise I got without any problems through the universe, scattering stars, but as soon as I arrived at the boardroom door and the high and mighty fucker at a conference with Eternity, I stopped talking. I just couldn’t go on. I couldn’t even peep. I sat there silently, clutching the steering wheel, blinking away tears. Then I managed to apologise. And then I lost it. And cried and wept and blubbered.
My kids at the back didn’t notice anything, they played and I was turned away from them. They have never seen me like this. As a matter of fact, I haven’t cried for some fifteen years. My wife has been caressing my hair for half a minute and I finally pulled myself together to be able to finish the poem, a sniffling driver in the middle of a shuffling Brussels vehicle fleet.
Second grade psychology students would have called it “a mental breakdown”, Hollywood film advisors “a total meltdown”, but I suspect that all the circumstances of the last weeks just heightened my sensibility, so I could finally, on the threshold of forty, for the first time in my life at least partially gain insight into poetry. So thank you, Viktor, for sharing Faber’s “Don’t Hesitate To Ask” and those three people who managed to read this text so far, I recommend that they read the poem. I can now read it without crying, I just get misty-eyed and the sorrow that wells up in me at the end of this text now completes until now an obviously incomplete range of my feelings. Thank you, Michel and Viktor." ...more

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Aug 16, 2016 Vanessa rated it really liked it

This was a very touching collection of poetry. Do I think it's incredibly well-written? Not in all cases no - but you can feel the emotion of Michel Faber's words as he relays his relationship with his sadly passed wife Eva, and recounts the troubling times during and after her illness.

There are a number poems in this collection in particular that really resonated with me: The Time You Chose, which moved me to tears as I discussed it with a friend after reading, The 13th, which has some truly go ...more

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Aug 02, 2016 Carol - Reading Writing and Riesling rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own

How do you rate someones pain and anger and grief?
By the way the words touch your soul, by the way your heart aches as you read.
This is a an exquisitely personal, intimate study of cancer, dying, grief and the authors love for his now deceased wife; his life companion, his life long love. ..

Poignant, angry (justifiably so), yet at times romantic and tender. This is love in real life, in the everyday, in the moment - be it the ugly moments of cancer or the moments the lovers dance and twirl tow ...more

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Apr 07, 2019 Jerrie (redwritinghood) rated it liked it

These are some earnest, heartfelt poems. He clearly loved his wife a lot and misses her. The poems themselves, however, are so-so. I definitely enjoy his novels much more.

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Apr 12, 2018 Kirsty rated it really liked it

Shelves: kindle, borrowed, april-2018

Michel Faber wrote the majority of the poems collected in Undying: A Love Story after the death of his wife from cancer. In his introduction, Faber writes that the poems 'are arranged not in order of their composition but in their appropriate place in the narrative of losing and grieving for Eva.' Some poems here are achingly tender; others startle and shock. There is so much emotion packed into this powerful collection, and whilst I did not enjoy every single poem, they work so well together on ...more

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Oct 15, 2018 Ylenia rated it liked it

Shelves: yleniareads-library, 2018-reads, 2016-reads

[ 3.25 stars ]

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Aug 21, 2016 Tom rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own, own-read

'I have waited patiently, oh so patiently,
before asking,
in my gentlest voice:
Can I lure you away?
Can I tempt you with our history?
This mattress has missed you.
Hollowed, it is fit for noone else,
Oh, I know you are snug
in your self-containment.
I know you are settled,
finally at ease
in your ash.
But please...
Just for tonight...
Just for one night...
Sleep with me.'

This collection is incredibly powerful, painful, and brutal. Through beautiful language comes the most angry poems I have ever read. This bo ...more

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Oct 12, 2019 Charles Edwards-Freshwater rated it it was amazing

Intimate, harrowing, lyrical, but most, importantly, filled with love. This collection of poetry is Faber's love letter to his dead wife in which he transforms the experience of her slowly dying of incurable cancer and their days filled with fear and sadness into a beautiful and hauntingly real collection of poems that I know will stick with me.

The love Faber had for his wife is absolutely palpable, and he doesn't shy away or overdramatise the harsh realities that suffering from cancer brings to ...more

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Dec 11, 2020 Paul Ataua rated it it was amazing

Faber’s poems honor the memory of his wife’s six year battle with cancer. The poems are full of pain, anger, grief, but above all love. Maybe it’s because I lost my mother to cancer many years ago that ‘Undying’ resonates with me.

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Aug 08, 2016 Seonaid rated it it was amazing

Shelves: poetry, dealing-with-grief, based-on-true-story

This is grief in all its intimate, raw and harrowing detail. From anger and guilt ('Such A Simple Thing I Could Have Fixed', dealing with mismatched bed linen, struck such a nerve it had me sobbing) to despair and fear of the future, Faber opens his soul and says the things we have thought and felt in our own moments of bereavement and heartache. These poems are beautifully written, honest and heartfelt, and so familiar.

Haunting, tender and full of love, I recommend you read these in a quiet, pe ...more

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Aug 07, 2016 Sophie rated it really liked it

Shelves: poetry

Holy crap. This was a tough read, but a beautiful one. 'Undying' is bursting with love and anger and grief. Such brutal honesty about cancer and death. ...more

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Aug 28, 2019 Sara Jovanovic rated it it was ok

2.5

Unfortunately, this didn't doo much for me. I disliked nearly all of the poems with the exception being "Old Bird, Not Very Well". And I wanted something to read quickly, but I ended up reading this for three days. ...more

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Jan 20, 2019 Kathy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019

I'm not crying, you're crying! ...more

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Aug 26, 2018 Jeroen rated it really liked it

This, like for instance C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, is the kind of book that is beyond any lucid literary critique. It feels downright amoral to point out its flaws, should they be there.

Faber is not a poet, not really, and as such his poetry is not the most accomplished or intricate that you will find, but that is not the point. One of the many touching things in this book (among the more obvious emotions) is that Faber has been able to employ this to him somewhat alien form or language of po ...more

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Jul 12, 2016 Chris rated it liked it

Poetry as therapy. Much of this collection is loosely coupled from poetry and almost becomes prose. Some is very poetic. It is a study of change and powerless anger when the author loses his wife. He is angry at losing her as a lover and as a partner and as a part of his world.

Some of the poetry moved me deeply and I recognised the emotion. Some surprised me with how much it revealed. It is still relatively soon after the death of Eva.

I found it difficult to read this purely as poetry. The autho ...more

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Jul 11, 2016 Helena rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 29, 2019 Alenka of Bohemia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-english, important-and-wonderful, poetry

I have finished this book in one quiet evening.... and I feel too overwhelmed with emotion. Perhaps this is not the best poetry there is. But it sure is a love story, as true a love story as one can imagine.

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Jul 03, 2017 Yasmeen Al-Salem rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Loved the details in this book. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

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Feb 24, 2019 Brendan rated it really liked it

I picked this up without knowing it was poetry, not the marketing fault, just my own. To say I was surprised is an understatement, but I'm opinionated enough to actually read and review. I read most of these out loud, and some were quite interesting. Some of these are heartbreakingly true and I was impressed by the raw honesty. I was picking a Michael Faber novel as my next selection and this arrived before Under the Skin, so I thought what the hell.

The book is quite short, and I read the bette I picked this up without knowing it was poetry, not the marketing fault, just my own. To say I was surprised is an understatement, but I'm opinionated enough to actually read and review. I read most of these out loud, and some were quite interesting. Some of these are heartbreakingly true and I was impressed by the raw honesty. I was picking a Michael Faber novel as my next selection and this arrived before Under the Skin, so I thought what the hell.

The book is quite short, and I read the better part of 80 pages in one sitting. Poetry isn't my ideal dream of reading, but I am willing to give something a chance when trying new things. Faber paints vivid pictures and the honesty is right in front of you the entire time. The sadness is in the truth, you can feel the sadness from the author. I was expecting short stories about loss, and I must admit this was an interesting change for me.

Faber's writing is interesting, not all poems are successful but what would I know. These are a personal closure and if Faber came out the other end of suffering through such a painful experience, that's enough for me. I couldn't love the book, I thought some of these poems weren't developed enough. I'm not clear on what I didn't like, it's tough to pick apart something that was obviously a tough experience.

Why the 4?

I liked it, but would I read another poetry novel in the next few weeks? Maybe not. The book is heartbreaking at times, some of the poems are tough to read. The process of death is an individual thing, I personally wrote a closure short story about a friend who died in high school. Everybody has their own thing, and reading another persons process is extremely hard, I feel bad for not loving it. I think if some of the poems were not included this might have been a tight book. I won't trash something that is clearly a personal thing and I hope others enjoy some of the writing like I did. I personally felt like I needed to like it and I now feel conflicted, slightly bias. Read it and think for yourself, but one thing is certain, it's a tough emotional read. ...more

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Mar 29, 2017 Cathy Geagan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: poetry

I put off reading Undying because I was afraid my usually stone-cold cynical heart could not cope with it. From the queasy raw intensity of his genre defying masterpiece Under the Skin, to the sweeping Victorian expanse of The Crimson Petal and the White, something about Michel Faber’s writing grabs me utterly. His directness of tone and immersive descriptions are a heady combination – and one that made his first slim volume of poetry slightly frightening. Undying chronicles Faber’s attempts to I put off reading Undying because I was afraid my usually stone-cold cynical heart could not cope with it. From the queasy raw intensity of his genre defying masterpiece Under the Skin, to the sweeping Victorian expanse of The Crimson Petal and the White, something about Michel Faber’s writing grabs me utterly. His directness of tone and immersive descriptions are a heady combination – and one that made his first slim volume of poetry slightly frightening. Undying chronicles Faber’s attempts to process the six-year battle with cancer; death; and absence of, his beloved wife of 26 years Eva.

How can you say goodbye to the love of your life? How can you reconcile the wonder of finding your perfect partner with the horror of losing them in slow motion? These poems are tender and devastating – there is a vulnerability and a rawness to them that shredded my heart. Read them - and then hug your lover close, call your mother, grab your pet and give it a big snuggle – be thankful you are alive. Faber doesn’t shirk from depicting the ravages of cancer, but even the darkest of these poems are suffused with hope and love. For me, the darkest poems come after Eva has passed, as Faber struggles to adjust to a world without her in it.

"All I can do, in what remains of my brief time,
is mention, to whoever cares to listen,
that a woman once existed, who was kind
and beautiful and brave, and I will not forget
how the world was altered, beyond recognition,
when we met."

Above all, these are love poems, in the deepest truest sense of the word. I read my first Michel Faber novel 17 years ago, and read all his fiction published since. I never really thought about his private life until I heard his announcement that he would not write any more fiction after Eva’s death and the publication of The Book of Strange New Things. After reading Undying, I feel I know Eva – that she was extraordinary, and that the world is a poorer place in her absence. These poems are more than a searing testimony of grief, they are a celebration of the impact we can make in life, the death-defying ripples of a life lived in kindness:

"You worked covertly, nurturing by stealth.
You lifted people up, nudged them to transcend
their limitations…
You’re dead. I know. And it is not for me
to show you death is not the end.
But you left lucencies of grace secreted in the world,
still glowing"
...more

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Apr 04, 2018 Philipp rated it it was amazing

Shelves: on-living, on-death, poetry

A collection of poems, roughly chronologically sorted around his wife's cancer diagnosis, death, and him trying to live on. Amazingly honest.

How reading this went:

1. Try not to cry
2. Cry a lot

Lucencies (2)

You worked covertly,
nurturing by stealth.
You lifted people up,
nudged them to transcend
their limitations,
in sickness and in health.
Those you assisted looked around
to thank you, but you'd hide.
When your influence began to spread
too far, you died. I still hear
your whisper in my ear:
'Let's be going

...more

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May 14, 2018 Mirjam Celie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018

That really took my breath away...

To quote the end of just one of all these excellent, crude, beautiful and sad poems:

(...)
What can I do to mark the passing of my wife?
Your cancer killed you and yet not one person
thought to call the BBC.
No weeping passersby left wreaths outside the scene,
no hacks accused the government
of being slow to act.
Your illness, with its crises flagging every stage,
failed, even so, to win a Wikipedia page.
In global terms, yours was an insignificant life.
Your death a n ...more

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Aug 09, 2016 Marlene Willinger rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-books, omg-these-books-i-can-t-even

I actually bought this book because the title intrigued me and after I saw that it contained poems I thought 'Why not?'

I wasn't that much of a poetry fan in truth and had just started to discover poetry as something that interested me but I certainly don't regret buying it.

I discovered that this isn't a collection of poems, this is - as the title says - a love story. It is incredibly well written and even though I am not the biggest fan of cancer stories I really enjoyed reading it. The poems ar ...more

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Feb 03, 2017 Maryam rated it liked it

Shocking I finished a book:))

It was good but it's a really personal and subjective poetry collection and idrk how to rate such a personal thing??? and also because I haven't ever experienced losing someone in general I couldn't connect with it (in other words I'm a sheltered cold unfeeling piece of shit wow who knew:)). But I definitely liked the first bit more than the second. ...more

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Apr 22, 2017 Ike rated it it was amazing

Shelves: poetry

Beautiful and heart wrenching and true to basically all facets of grief and just very, very good.

Edit: 2 years later, after my first full reread, this is still very good. I still love 'Don't hesitate to ask' the most, although 'Risotto' and 'Of Old Age, In Our Sleep' have also stuck with me a lot. It's just very good. ...more

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About Michel Faber

Michel Faber

1,735 followers

Michel Faber (born 13 April 1960) is a Dutch writer of English-language fiction.

Faber was born in The Hague, The Netherlands. He and his parents emigrated to Australia in 1967. He attended primary and secondary school in the Melbourne suburbs of Boronia and Bayswater, then attended the University Of Melbourne, studying Dutch, Philosophy, Rhetoric, English Language (a course involving translation a ...more