Paradiso

Shortly before her death Gillian Rose began work on a new book - her Paradiso - thus fulfilling her promise at the end of Love's Work to 'stay in the fray, in the revel of ideas and risk'. Confident even only a week before her death that she could complete the work, all that remains are these fragments here published for the first time. In them Rose combined the detached insight of one who is taking leave, or who has almost left, with a desire to participate in the joys of life until the last. Exceeding the injunction quoted in Love's Work to 'keep your mind in hell and despair not', Paradiso sketches a movement through the hell and despair of terminal illness to an affirmation of the joys of companionship and memory.