Malagash is a novel that will stay with me for a long time. I felt empathy for every single character in this very successful book, and I believe this was what the author Joey Comeau hoped his readers would feel.

The premise of the book is terminal illness and what it does to a family. The voice and the viewpoint belong to the patient’s daughter Sunday. As tragic as the situation is, the family’s coping with it, especially that of children, is heartfelt and bittersweet and the author approaches his topic with realism, sophistication, and sometimes, humor.

The setting is Malagash, a place located on the north shore of Nova Scotia where Sunday’s father was born and raised and where her parents met. The family has moved here to let the father live his last days in a place that means much to him. Sunday and Simon, Sunday's younger brother, while going through this ordeal, bond strongly together. The grandmother is also an inhabitant of Malagash and the family is staying with her in her small house. Later on, the father’s brother and his partner also arrive to see the father one last time.

Sunday has a project. As she is very good in programming, she is working on creating a virus that is supposed to go into every computer on earth with her father’s words and voice. This way, she is planning to keep her father alive, something like a ghost. To do that, she secretly records her father’s conversations with everyone via her cellphone. Each evening she converts her audio files by indexing them as sound bites into a database. In the beginning, Sunday’s project is secret. Later in the book, she shares it with her younger brother Simon. Sunday works inside a closet, which she has made into her study.

All characters are splendidly drawn, and in the story, even the secondary and supporting characters are portrayed with utmost care and proficiency in a believable story.

Sunday, the protagonist, adores her father. Her father is not even forty yet and he speaks in metaphors, poetically, and while working on her project, Sunday reveals and, at times, finds out for herself several meaningful facts about the other members of her family. Although Sunday’s mother is a psychiatrist and she acts quite normally throughout the ordeal, when the inevitable happens, she mourns in the worst way. Her behavior is a strong contrast to her mother-in-law who is there for everyone and keeps her sorrow under control. Then, through this trying time, all characters show growth in various degrees and the beauty of their inner beings.

The writing is clear, natural, and exquisite. Above all, every single action and scene in the book adds to and enhances the overall story in a delicate, compassionate but not sappy way, which, shows the author’s mastery of the writing craft even though this book is a short one, only about 180 pages. I think it is a great book written with great skill, and I am so glad I read it.

everything.

read other books by this author

sad, but I admired the writing.

is Joey Comeau, a Canadian writer. He is best known for his novels Lockpick Pornography and Overqualified.

it is a human story, delicately sad and humorous at the same time.

I hadn't heard of this author, at all. Even someone who might have gone through such an ordeal, probably, couldn't put it in such moving words like he has done.

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