In this noteworthy book, journalist David Rieff sets out to record his mother, Susan Sontag’s state of mind after she was diagnosed with terminal blood cancer. It’s an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking, as anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one from cancer would know. For most relatives it’s hard to remember more than the painful blare of the headline moments, the incredible news of the diagnosis, the dreaded interview with the palliative care nurse; the stuff in between becomes a blur. Moreover, so much of the sufferer’s state of mind is simply unknowable, not least because many cancer patients and their loved ones find a deep reserve between them that they could not have predicted. Rieff never presumes to know exactly what his mother thought, but he has a reporter’s gift of empirical observation. He is also greatly assisted by Sontag’s journals, which he read after her death, ‘following the trail she herself put down so as not to lose herself completely, rather like the breadcrumbs Hansel and Gretel leave behind to be able to find their way home’. Ultimately, it’s the son’s lot – the helplessness he privately feels, the façade of rational optimism he presents to his mother – that the book most illuminates.