An Ideal Presence

Argentinian writer Berti (The Imagined Land) offers a searching, humane account of a palliative care unit in Rouen, France, where he spent a “medico-literary” residency. The novel comprises short testimonies from doctors, nurses, aides, and social workers as they share their views of patients, some more responsive than others, all of whom are nearing their death. There are scenes of chilling frankness, as when a nursing aide says of the night shift: “Sometimes a patient will call and ask, in a child’s voice, ‘Leave the door open a bit, please.’ That’s not a good sign. No, never.” There are also eccentrics who provide entertaining, if brief, company, like the South American calculating how many transfusions it will take for him to be “100 percent French by blood.” Berti is excellent on how the work affects his subjects, who often can’t avoid becoming personally invested. One volunteering violinist, for example, is stung when no one calls her to play for her music-loving patient “during her final throes.” An essayistic tone dominates, causing the entries to bleed into one another, down to shared tics: “It’s funny”; “It’s funny to say”; “The really funny thing though.” Nonetheless, the moments of quiet humor, grief, and grace make this oddly enlivening. (Sept.)