2024-02-10 10:20:19
LIVRES – There are many books on the end of life, but this one stands out and overturns preconceptions on the subject. Can we only imagine the depth of the abyss that opens when Shizuku, a young woman of 33, learns from her doctor that she has incurable cancer and that she has few weeks left to live.
Goodbye to the possibility of feeling the caress of summer! Refusing to follow useless treatments and endure relentless therapeutic treatment, she also does not want to end her days in the room of some impersonal hospital. She lives alone, and is no longer in contact with her father, whom she has not seen for five years…
He is directed to a palliative care establishment, La Maison du lion, on Lemon Island, in a heavenly setting! She then discovers a sort of guesthouse where the last moments of life will be unforgettable moments, where everything is done to relieve the pain of the body, but above all to soothe that of the soul, in a particularly delicious atmosphere. Here, there are no patients, but “guests”. Everyone has the right to have a nickname. So “Madonna”, the director, is waiting for him on Christmas Day. This woman brings in her number of warm people.
Shizuku forms a special bond with the little dog Rokka. And then there is this wonderful Sunday ritual, the lion’s snack. Recipe ? Write a request for a snack, describe the reasons and link it to a particular memory from your childhood. It is a question of flavors, like so many little creamy desserts to remind us that happiness is essentially found in the simplest pleasures. It’s these thousand little things, Carpe diem which give this book all its brilliance, and all these superimposed moments, each more delicious than the other which make it so touching. If emotion is omnipresent, because of the memory of people who were dear to us, this novel never falls into pathos.
These exchanges are overwhelming, these joys, angers or realizations of Shizuku, which plunge us into the truth of finitude. Because, much more than a plea for the right to die with dignity, this novel is a learning book to change your outlook on death in order to live fully while welcoming it as best as possible.
Even if there are some specialized end-of-life homes in France, we begin to dream that we could find more places similar to this Lion House, where the words humanity, respect, gentleness and delicacy take their full place ! Carried by the very beautiful and poetic writing of Ito Ogawa, this modest and magnificent book gives off a strong vibration of love. A text between smiles and tears that resonates in us long after we have closed it. A great discovery and a real favorite!
A sentence to meditate on:
“At the Lion House, we savor the delight of life to the last drop.”
The Lion’s Snack, It’s Ogawa. Editions Philipe Picquier (2022). 260 pages. 19 euros.
Presentation of the publisher:
What makes this serious and modest book a solar novel is first of all the place: the lemon island in the inland sea of Japan, which must be reached by boat; and again, the magnificent image of the union of the sea, the sky and the light: the sparkling sea, illuminated by an incredible smile, overlooked by the Lion House, this place of peace where Shizuku chose to come for live your last days fully while awaiting death.
With her, we will meet the residents – her comrades, her allies and, frankly, her new family – as well as the dog Rokka who attaches herself to her for her greatest happiness. In their company, there will also be Sunday snacks where one’s love of life gradually grows when one savors it at the same time as a childhood dessert, a life that would taste like tofu flower, of an apple pie or peony mochis.
With the delicacy of writing that we know from his previous novels, Ito Ogawa gradually leads Shizuku on a path of poetry whose melody has the deep and conciliatory voice of a cello; a peaceful path as if to express gratitude for existing.
#Lions #Snack #hunger #life