AN IDEAL PRESENCE

A series of vignettes from the perspectives of people who care for the dying.

Inspired by his literary residency at a hospital in Rouen, France, Argentinian novelist Berti tells the lightly fictionalized stories of caretakers at a palliative-care center, portraying the complex and varied relationships between patients and caretakers and patients and their families as well as the intricate hierarchy that exists among the staff. There is no single narrative that runs through all the stories. Instead, the caretakers speak about what feels most relevant to them and their work: There's a nursing aid who cleans a child’s stained teddy bear, a nurse who calls a patient’s ex-lover on his behalf, and a volunteer who reads aloud the last few pages of a patient’s beloved detective novel while the patient lies dead a few feet away. Despite the subject matter, Berti’s prose feels neither maudlin nor macabre. Instead, his portrayal of patients at the height of vulnerability and the caretakers who “assist and accompany at the moment of death” is at once delicate, complex, and respectful, providing intimacy without being voyeuristic. And while no big answers to life’s great questions of death and suffering are given, Berti’s triumph is bringing us deep into a topic that even his characters admit isn’t always comfortable: “Talking about death and suffering isn’t within everyone’s grasp. So I keep quiet. I protect them.”

Deeply affecting.