Borrowed Time is must!

Finding this book on my reading list for a literature course, I certainly was not looking forward to spending a few days under an umbrella of gloom and misery. But I resisted the temptation to overlook it and plunged right in. I'm glad I did. It's a humbling experience to be faced with mortality, especially someone else's.

Borrowed Time recounts the eighteen plus months where Paul Monette cared for his dying partner who was suffering from HIV and then AIDS. This is not a 'gay story' as such, simply an affirmation of compassion, understanding, love and friendship between two people.

Monette allows us into his life during the mid 80s in America, where his partner Roger Horwitz has been diagnosed with AIDS. Being a relatively new phenomenon, AIDS wasn't really understood and was veiled in uncertainty, fear and misunderstanding. When Horwitz was unable to shift a lingering illness, Monette used his medical contacts to obtain a second opinion. Finally the correct diagnosis was achieved and so started an endless round of combination drug therapies to try and beat the grotesque and frightening disease.

Monette asserts himself as a one-man terminator to rid his partner of the frightening and life-extinguishing illness. Initially the bravado and chemical arsenal appear to get the upper hand: Horwitz even returns to his law practice and Monette to his writing, but the inevitability of the prognosis reaffirms its dominance. . . As his condition deteriorates and the endless rounds of searching for the magical elixir gently subsides, a somewhat tragic calmness becomes the normality. Aspect by aspect, Horwitz's life is taken from him as the disease poisons his blood, until the inevitability of the prognosis concludes the tragedy.

Monette's love for his partner is evident throughout the 342 pages of this heart-wrenching memoir. With just a little hysteria, he allows the reader to share the darkest parts of the "fight", while also participating in the brief respites of happiness. It is an angry read which evokes many conflicting emotions, not least the enveloping shroud of inevitability. Monette captures and recreates this 18 months of the dark struggle through the comprehensive journal that he kept throughout his partner's illness and subsequent death. This allows for the detailed general interaction between the two to be resurrected with soul-shaking clarity, while avoiding the regurgitation of facts.

The emotions conveyed and evoked are frighteningly potent, aiming at the heart with conclusive exactness. It is difficult not to reach out each time Horwitz experiences a slight reprieve from his illness, only to have it cruelly snatched away. But they employ the philosophy of glass half full - replacing hopelessness with thankfulness - rejoicing that he is still alive. Constantly re-evaluating their perception each time the disease mounts an onslaught becomes the pattern and blanket of defence: no longer does Horwitz's losing sight in one eye precipitate doom, rather they celebrate the vision of the other. But the disease is tireless! Inevitably the perimeters of the drug's defences are finally breached, rendering the disease triumphant.

Borrowed time is 'charged', frightening and tragic. Conversely, it's a testament to love, understanding and friendship. It is not a book to be read by a prejudicial mind that validates through labels or eye for an eye philosophy. . . rather by a mind that is receptive to an embrace of understanding, humanity and compassion.

Further to Roger Horwitz's death. Paul Monette was subsequently diagnosed with the same condition and died in February 1995. He did live to see the memoir published.