Lizzy Stewart, author and illustrator
I’m in the early draft stages of a new book so my reading lately has been, at best, scattered and, more often, fraught. It’s especially frustrating as summer is the time I most want to be lounging around with a book. As a result, I’ve found that I’m veering towards shorter books I can chuck down in one greedy burst. Cheri by Jo Ann Beard is a perfect example of this. A tiny gem of a book that tells the story of the final weeks of a terminally ill woman as she takes a last loving look at the world. Beard communicates, quietly and almost plainly, a breathless desperation for life and all its terrible beauty and drab, daily profundity.
