An achingly beautiful meditation about death and dying. Angela Rodel’s translation of International Booker winner Georgi Gospodinov’s Death and the Gardener is short but impactful. Each page flows with precise, melancholic prose that is reflective yet gut-wrenching. A man recounts his father’s final days: the receiving of the diagnoses, doctor’s appointments, the medications, the deterioration of the body, feelings of guilt and humiliation. Nobody teaches us how to grow old. What does one do at the end of one’s life? What is it to feel like a burden to others? For the narrator, watching his father die brings confusion over whether he is doing the best things for him in each moment, just wanting him not to be in pain. He must suddenly become a parent to his own parent, fretting anxiously about when death would finally come. Then there is the confusion about what to do immediately after someone dies and learning to be without him. An incredibly moving and powerful work.

This lovely short novel joins the ranks of great novels and works of literature on death and grief, and the experience of being an adult dealing with the death of one's parents. The novel suggests near the end that it is a memoir/novel, though I don't know enough about Gospodinov to know if this is true or just part of the storytelling. Either way it reads as a memoir, told from the perspective of a middle-aged man whose father is in the last stage of cancer, where no treatments are possible except pain medications that barely work. His father is a dedicated gardener, and gardening serves as a nice running metaphor for the continuity of life, so that as the narrator's father is dying, his daughter is nearing graduation, and the garden is overwintering, so that in the months following the death of the gardener, his fruit trees blossom and his beloved Dutch tulips bloom again.
An excellent novel, and one that gives one things to think about and relate to regardless of how closely the reader can relate to the story itself, and I suspect that with the thoughtfulness of this one, it may be more soothing than triggering for readers dealing with loss and grief.

Oof. This book took me through an emotional journey. I never read anything by Gospodinov, and I don't know anything about him, but I felt him in these pages. This book was raw and full of sorrow, but it made me laugh as the author recounts his father's stories. I teared up at the beautiful sentences and the profound sense of grief. What a beautiful little book.

"Death and the Gardener" by Georgi Gospodinov is an unflinching dissection of the time leading up to the death of the narrator's father. I picked this up because I wanted to challenge myself as someone pretty terrified of death. I succeeded. It's a hard read.

This novel was beautiful: so full of love with expertly written prose. With such a narrow scope I worried scenes would be repetitive, and while the content is consistently similar, Gospodinov’s originality and agility on the page sings— ensuring the book never feels one-note. The honest exposition of human emotion in the gravest of circumstances creates so much tension. It feels like you can't look away: from the tragedy of the loss of a parent; the hope and pride their steadfastness even in the face of the unknown fills you with; the terror their fear can cause in you— it's all dissected with such affection and grace.

This is for anyone who wants to experience a perspective on death that is raw, sympathetic, and introspective.