Do you have a difficult relationship with death? If you do, this book is for you.

The Collected Regrets of Clover is the first fiction book of Australian writer and journalist Mikki Brammer. We follow the story of Clover, a woman in her late 30s living in New York and working as a death doula.

And what kind of profession is that, you might ask. According to the Cleveland Clinic website, “Birth doulas and death doulas function like two sides of the same coin”. While the traditional type of doula assists people and families at the moment when new life is coming to the world, a death doula helps people and families when someone is leaving this world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the process of aging and dying lately. First, because my body is starting to show its first signs of age while I approach 40, but mainly because my parents are approaching this more challenging time of life. I hope to still have them around for maybe a decade or so, but I’m constantly worrying about their health challenges.

As I said to a friend the other day – how do you do this? How do you go about this business of your parents dying? I have no idea. And this is actually one of the topics of the book: how people, especially in Western societies, avoid the topic of death at all costs.

The heroin of our book is the opposite, she has no fear of talking about death or looking it in the face. Living, on the other hand, is not exactly her forte. Having lost both her parents at a young age, she has lived with her grandfather for most of her life. Although he was a strong presence in her life, he was also a bit of a loner and introvert, which only accentuated these characteristics in her.

She starts the book as this very lonely person who, despite living in a city busting with people at the seams, avoids social contact at all costs. Until one day, in a Death Cafe she meets someone who sets in motion a series of events that will change her life forever.

The writing is beautiful and is very touching to watch Clover slowly start to open up to the people that so unexpectedly enter her life. Several moments made me emotional, and I might have shed more than one tear on the streets while listening to this audiobook. By the way, the narrator of this book, Jennifer Pickens does such an excellent job of conveying all the emotion softly, her narration makes all the difference.

The only thing I disliked about the book is that it got a bit cheesy at the end, with all the life lessons she learned. The classic “live your life to the fullest to avoid regrets later” is a beautiful lesson that yes, we all should learn to embrace, but when you put it in the mouths of too many characters it can become a little cliché…

In any way, this is another great reading if you enjoy beautifully descriptive writing and sensitive topics like I do.