Kirkus Review  TO BE HERE IS IMMENSE  by Clare Simons

A wryly self-aware story of truth-seeking that becomes darkly gripping in its final pages.

Simons, an assisted-death advocate, recounts her religious odyssey and the loss of a spouse in this memoir.

From a young age, the author exhibited a spiritual hunger. She attended lectures on esoteric philosophy, joined Haitian charismatics at prayer in Harlem, sung Mass in Latin with nuns, and sought the wisdom of spirit guides in a psychic church. Over time, this relentless questing left her feeling cynical and jaded: “With the reckless abandon of a drowning person…I doubled down on my search for God, checkbook in hand.” Then she encountered the Hindu guru Sri Mātā Amritānandamayī Devī, known as Amma, and this, Simons says, transformed her life. She became a devoted disciple, following Amma across the world and beseeching her to bless her marriage to Scott Rice, whom she met in the course of her work as an advocate for medical aid for the dying, and whom she describes as “the only person who has truly loved me.” After a string of bad relationships, she was smitten with the handsome American Canadian expatriate and conscientious objector, a National Merit Scholar whose first wife had died young with the assistance of the organization Compassion in Dying. Scott became fascinated by Amma, and after a flood led to deadly mudslides in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, he received her blessing to visit the afflicted region and blog about the rescue mission. Owing to the dangerous nature of the job, he traveled alone. Simons rarely heard from him and began to feel increasingly estranged. During his occasional visits, she was tense and withdrawn; in his absence, she worried about all the ways in which he might perish while away from home. The end, when it did come, was devastating.

In this wide-ranging memoir, Simons demonstrates an omnivorous intellectual and spiritual curiosity that calls to mind Dorothea Brooke, the protagonist of Middlemarch. By turns bawdy, self-deprecating, and good-humored, she proves an ideal narrator for the story of a woman driven by a passion for knowledge and justice, resulting in ventures that can be rewarding but sometimes ill-advised (including time spent with a cult). Her narrative voice is utterly charming throughout and, regardless of one’s politics or philosophy, comes to feel, by the end, like a conversational and well-informed friend. In the book’s final third, Simons provides an unsparing dissection of a marriage that was already suffering from Scott’s negligence, even before his sudden death. As his emails became less frequent, she grappled with feelings of betrayal toward Amma (“My spouse was officially an Amma roadie”) and questioned whether she even still wanted to be married. That self-awareness, and her willingness to embrace the relationship in its totality, rather than glossing over its less-pleasant aspects, makes the latter part of the book a thing of enduring fascination—one that will linger in the reader’s mind long after the book’s end. It’s a much-needed cautionary tale of how physical separation and lack of communication can rupture even a seemingly perfect romance. A wryly self-aware story of truth-seeking that becomes darkly gripping in its final pages.

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2026 Review Program: Kirkus Indie Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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The sacred and the profane are never far apart in this hilarious, heartbreaking memoir about loving another person through the mess of our own humanity while traveling together on the path to God. Simons is a seeker of the first order—intelligent, skeptical, self-questioning—and her story of loss and metamorphosis deserves a place next to Elaine Mansfield’s Leaning into Love and Andrew Harvey’s Return of the Mother. Resolutely entertaining, Clare Simons is an original.

—Mark Matousek, Author of Sex Death Enlightenment and Lessons From an American Stoic: How Emerson Can Change Your Life 

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Clare's search was propelled by some of the most transformative political messages of our time. Her behind-the-scenes narrative is more compelling than anything in front of the camera could ever be. We see her pass from keen observer to passionate advocate and from lover to widow, always chasing Truth on the path of mercy and compassion.

—Barbara Coombs Lee, President Emerita & Senior Advisor, Compassion & Choices; author of Finish Strong: Putting Your Priorities First at the End of Life

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The triumph here is the authority of the storytelling voice, breezy, easily elegant. We believe in it. I’m talking trust. The stories fill me with joy and make my head spin. The rush of the real world and the ecstatic s disarmingly beautiful.

—Joanna Rose, author of A Small Crowd of Strangers

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A deeply moving depiction of resilience and self-discovery   

- Sandra Koch, author of Bookends of Life 

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Carries readers through a full spectrum of human emotion

- Amy Smith Miller, author Home: A Memoir of Family, Forgiveness, and Healing from Complex PTSD

To Be Here Is Immense will appeal to audiences interested in upmarket Women's Second Acts, Aging Forward, Death With Dignity, Widowhood, and Grief.  Fans of #Mirabai Starr, #Amy Bloom, #Elizabeth Alexander, and #Elizabeth Gilbert will be drawn to Simons' memoir about tril by fire, big-hoop spirituality.  

To Be Here Is Immense could be an excellent fit for film rights, optioned for development of a screenplay, and ideal for a forty-something actress willing to bare her soul, warts and all, and age gracefully on the screen.