Michael Rosen - Many Different Kinds Of Love

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

Involving and moving 

I thought Many Different Kinds Of Love was excellent. It’s not just that we all love Michael Rosen and are delighted that he didn’t die of Covid – it really is a very fine, involving an often moving account of his time in hospital, his (continuing) recovery and the aftermath of his illness.

Much of the book is in the form of prose-poems about Michael’s experience. Many are reflective but they are also brilliantly descriptive and capture the essence of extraordinary moments and periods, like this brief one:

“A doctor is standing by my bed

asking me if I would sign a piece of paper

which would allow them to put me to sleep

and pump air into my lungs.

‘Will I wake up?’‘There’s a 50: 50 chance.’

‘If I say no?’I say.

‘Zero.’

And I sign.”

The early part of the book covers a time when Michael was unconscious much of the time and it consists largely of emails from family and others (especially Michael’s wife Emma, a quiet heroine of this story) and a Patient Journal with contributions form those who looked after him in Intensive Care and hovering on the edge of death for weeks. Individually, they are charming and quite touching, but taken as a whole I found the unfailing and genuine care, encouragement and sincere affection from so many people (coming from so many prts of the world) extremely moving. As Michael later says:

“Why did these strangers try so hard

to keep me alive?

It’s a kindness I can hardly grasp.”

Michael’s descriptions and reflections are vivid and thoughtful, and they give an exceptional and, for me, utterly gripping picture of his experience. It isn’t a long book, but it conveyed more than many books several times its length. Everyone should read this; it’s wholly involving and very illuminating account of what Covid really means and the immensity of the human spirit which is standing up to it.

(My thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.)