It is appropriate that The Funny Thing About Death is part memoir for Jo Caulfield’s funny, talented, spiky sister Annie and part Jo’s autobiography. For, the way Jo tells it, big sister Annie led the way in carefree adventuring – living the life of nun-rebeller, teenage hitchhiker, raucous bar staff, award-winning writer – with little sister Jo in her wake and eager to join as soon as she could, their childhoods and early adulthoods twinned and entwined, filled with anecdotes of wickedly reckless behaviour and high spirits. So even when news of Annie’s cancer diagnosis breaks, this continues to be both of their stories.
They really make a marvellous pair, Annie larger than life and Jo creating her own brands of rebellion and adventure. The cutting between their youthful history, exploring and finding their own paths into creative lives, with Annie’s later relationship with her cancer – and Jo’s relationship with that – keeps the vivacious Annie front and centre even as her body weakens.
Caulfield is sharp and funny, capturing childhood eccentricities marvellously, alongside the cathartic necessity of humour in the darker times. Her writing in honest and highly readable, intimate without being mawkish or overly sentimental. There’s a respectful accuracy in the telling of Annie’s journey with cancer that although deeply individual also offers a shared experience for any one of the rest of the 50 per cent of the population likely to be touched by it. A solo odyssey on a shared path, a companionships nobody wants.
The closeness between the sisters sizzles energetically on every page – casting the closing solitude of Jo and the devastating loss of Annie not by by an abundance of words, but the lack of the person who had always led the way so fearlessly. There’s a pedestrian desolation in grief that Jo draws, a universal experience, and an individual hurt. But also a warmth in having known and loved such a fabulous and multi-faceted person.
This memoir is for both of the sisters, both writers, both funny, both caustic, both determinedly unsentimental, both super clever with the words. It’s also for everyone else.
Buy here.
