Word: currenity
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PONTIAC, Michigan: After being cleared four times in the past five years on assisted suicide charges, Kevorkian is once again a controversial figure, this time in the suicide of 42 year-old Massachusetts resident Judith Curren. Curren had been suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and fybromalgia, a painful muscle disorder which left her unable to move. Neither illness is fatal. A report released Monday by the Oakland County medical examiner says that he found no evidence of chronic fatigue syndrome or any other disease. But Curren had been contemplating suicide for four years, and finally against her husband's wishes...
...heart of J.M. Coetzee's disturbing new novel is the stark image of cancer, a malignant disease that takes little pity on its victim as it ravages and destroys. The narrator of the tale is Mrs. Curren, a white South African widow of the liberal variety who is being eaten from within by a cancer she knows will shortly end her life. Her physical pain and advanced years entitle her to live out her final days in a quiet, dignified fashion. But circumstances conspire against graceful surrender. Separated by an ocean from her only child...
...Curren returns from her doctor's office with news confirming her death sentence, she finds in her yard Vercueil, a foul-smelling vagrant who lives off his wits and other people's garbage. Together they forge an unexpected friendship that provides them both with the only breath of kindness in a world that has forsaken its humanity. First, however, they must surmount their differences. Mrs. Curren is determined to fight to the last, trying to stamp out South Africa's proliferating injustices; Vercueil wants only to disappear into his cardboard shack without responsibility to anyone or anything...
...evades the tyranny of a system that pits white against black and young against old; everyone is forced to take sides. A central event involves the murder of Bheki, 15, a youth who could have been sired by any of today's black townships. Just days before, Mrs. Curren watched helplessly as Bheki taunted and beat the drunken Vercueil. "How will they treat their own children?" she scolds Florence, her maid and Bheki's mother. "What love will they be capable of?" "They are good children," Florence responds without apology. "They are like iron, we are proud of them...
Coetzee is at his most surefooted when he crisply narrates events, letting the horror speak for itself. Too often, however, he seems not to trust the reader, stating and restating his distress. The story is also gilded with tedious descriptions of Mrs. Curren's longing for her daughter, which rely on cliches such as "the blood tug of daughter to mother, woman to woman...