In her end-of-life care clinic, Dr.D Clarissa Gardner leaves nothing to chance. To the point where patients must deliver a performance before taking their last breath. In his new novel, On the heights of Mount Thoreauauthor Catherine Mavrikakis deals with the obsession with perfection even in death.
Suffering from incurable cancer, Rose Leroy chose to receive medical assistance in dying in the establishment of the DD Gardner, New England. His three sisters, Merline, Alexandrine and Léonie, are by his side. But before saying goodbye to this 49-year-old woman, they will have to try to compose an opera or a play with her.
The creation of a work by the dying and their family is the trademark of Thoreau Heights. It is also the “most famous and [de] the most successful clinic in the world in postmodern approaches to death,” says Clarissa Gardner.
On a daily basis, the doctor works to stage a flawless choreography for the last days of the sufferers. This end of life, settled quickly, will however be called into question by Rose, who denounces the obligation of having to “make the most of” the rest of one’s existence, without having any respite.
In her new book, Catherine Mavrikakis offers a sharp critique of a society obsessed with the desire to excel until the grave. The Montreal author, to whom we owe in particular The annex (2019) and Oscar De Profundis (2016), once again explores the theme of death from all its angles.
“Quiet death” and mountain of ambition
Consumed by her ambition, Clarissa Gardner constantly wishes to push the limits of her field. Throughout the pages, she comes to ask the following question: to whom should we make the “quiet death of modern medicine” accessible?
The doctor concludes that “healthy and enlightened” patients should also be able to benefit from it. “Isn’t the role of the establishment to support people in their life choices and in their desire to kill themselves, which can turn out to be very rational? » she raises.
As a “visionary”, she claims to be the American writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau. She draws inspiration from it when she climbs the peaks of the region, in order to get away “from the world and its vain worries”.
In the eyes of the DD Gardner, this “elevation of spirit” must be reflected even in the appearance of the caregivers at Thoreau Heights. These are therefore always dressed to the nines. Their appearance and their clothes are “the guarantee of a feeling of a task well accomplished, without the slightest guilt, without the shadow of regret and above all without any fear of death”, believes the doctor.
In this setting, the Leroy sisters stand out. Their passage will cause a crack in the smooth facade of Thoreau Heights, this place where the end of all must resemble “fireworks of happiness”. And this, to the detriment of the real emotions that patients experience.