The Things That Need Doing

November 1, 2010
An only child's final months caring for his dying mother proves an ordinary, universal story—and tremendously moving in the hands of Akron, Ohio-born journalist Manning. After complications from a heart attack, Manning's mother, a 58-year-old nurse who had battled asthma and Hodgkin's lymphoma earlier in her life, spends a year in Cleveland Clinic's Respiratory Special Care Unit undergoing intensely painful and intrusive treatments including feeding tubes and lung suctioning. When his mother grows increasingly debilitated, despite moments of hope, and isn't strong enough to undergo the radiation needed to combat a cancerous clot found in her lungs, she's eventually moved to an Akron hospice. At the time, Manning was a journalist and caterer living in New York City with his girlfriend, Elaine, and just turning 27; he moved to Cleveland, visiting his mother daily and advocating for her care. He re-creates this wrenching time with the help of his Aunt Claire's journal, alternating these events with memories of his growing up in Akron, attending St. Vincent–St. Mary's school, into Cleveland's professional sports teams. He expresses by turns his incredulity and anger at his mother's final agony, resigned to his powerlessness, and simply determined to do what he could until the end: love her.

October 15, 2010

A son's memoir about caring for his ill mother during the last year of her life.

Manning (editor: Top of the Order: 25 Writers Pick Their Favorite Baseball Player of All Time, 2010, etc.) unsparingly recounts what happened when his mother, Susan, was hospitalized with cardiac issues complicated by lung cancer and gastroparesis (stomach paralysis). Susan was a single parent and nurse whose kindness, courage and determination inspired everyone who knew her. Heart problems ran in her family, but the heart attack she suffered at 58 caught everyone, including her son, off guard. The book centers on Susan's life at the three Cleveland medical facilities that became her home for one year. As her health declined, Manning became the parent looking after a mother rendered vulnerable and helpless by her condition. With admirable objectivity and restraint, the author writes about the people, procedures, machines and medications that worked—sometimes at cross purposes—to keep Susan alive. The book is not just a portrait of a woman with a ferocious will to live, but of the American health-care system and how it treats illness and death. Manning punctuates the main narrative with stories about his family, his own life as a writer and caterer in New York and the Cleveland sports teams—the Cavaliers, Indians and Browns—that helped him "differentiate one day from the next." Moments of levity are few, however, and the story moves unrelentingly toward its inevitable—but for Susan, merciful—conclusion. The intimate details about his mother's physical struggles and the emotional stresses and strains he and his family suffered occasionally make the book read like a private journal. Paraphrasing a line from Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, Manning admits that he wrote the story "more to get it out my head than for posterity" and as a way "to acknowledge how messy this shit gets." Nonetheless, the author's candor and genuine emotion shine through.

Honest and gut-wrenching.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2010
From Gunthers Death Be Not Proud (1949) to Didions The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), memoirs recounting a loved ones death have long been deemed a respectable and dignified way for writers to mourn their loss. Although Manning doesnt quite yet belong in those authors lofty company, this heartbreaking account of his mothers last year of life is a worthy addition to the genre. As the only child of amicably divorced parents, Manning was a caterer and aspiring writer living in New York in 2006 when his mother, Susie Manning, suffered a heart attack and fell into a downward spiral of health issues, including intractable nausea and lung cancer. Peppering his narrative with reminiscences about growing up in Akron, Ohio, and improbably relevant Cavaliers basketball references, Manning describes Susies endless challenges with feeding tubes and medications at the Cleveland Clinic before finally passing away in hospice care. While unsparing in his criticism of contemporary medicine, Manning nevertheless finds much that was ennobling about his mothers struggles, including the loving support that ultimately brought his family closer together.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)