Life

Radio review: Saying farewell to life

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

Nuala McCann
Nuala McCann Nuala McCann

RisingTideFallingStar Book of the Week Radio 4

Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City: The days of Anna Madrigal Radio 4

Writer Philip Hoare is swimming on his own - an hour before dawn - in a strange sea.

In the dark, he can hear a pair of tawny owls and a fox slips by.

It is a magical moment. In a still sea, he writes, you feel the water; you lose yourself in its sway.

Fish bite, leaving lovely grazes. You float on your back watching the stars fall.

The sea is full of stars and the stars are full of the sea.

Hoare writes poetry prose, he paints pictures for us, draw deep on the atmosphere – it is sensual, gentle, beautiful.

What is it about our need to be immersed in water or, at least, to be near it?

This is bewitching ... just like Anna Madrigal, who is now 92 and whose thoughts are getting tangled.

Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City: The Days of Anna Madrigal is like catching up with a dear old friend.

In her old age, Anna is committed to “leaving like a lady”.

As life carries her friends onwards, she feels like she is waving to them all from the shore.

The thoughts of the legendary landlady of 28 Barbary Lane who grew pot in the back yard, interweave and collapse, she is visited by the ghosts of the past.

Getting old is a series of small surrenders, she confesses, like the end of candle light, because of what Anna delicately calls a few “incidents”.

For lovers of the books, this is sheer nostalgia for San Francisco back in the 70s and 80s.

But life has moved on, Shawna is headed for the Burning Man festival, hoping to find a father for a prospective child.

And Anna, as Shawna says, is just kind of packing up, saying her own farewell to life.