Death takes a toll

A woman who comforts the dying struggles to connect with the living.

- BRIGID FEEHAN

THE COLLECTED REGRETS OF CLOVER, by Mikki Brammer (Viking, $37)

Clover Brooks is a “death doula”, someone who sits by the beds of the dying, comforting them and helping them prepare for death. When we first meet her, she’s up to her 97th death. She wonders, as do we, how she got to this point: “Thirty-six years old and my whole life revolved around waiting for strangers to die.” Her social life consists of a friendship with her elderly neighbour, watching through binoculars the happy couple who live across the street from her New York apartment – think Rear Window without the murder – and going to death cafes: places where “strangers got together to ponder the intricacies of mortality over food and wine”.