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Reviewed by Fiza Pathan for Readers' Favorite
Five Hours, penned by Lucinda Weatherby, is an in-depth and revealing account of how the birth of Theo, the writer’s son, changed her perception of life and death. It is a well written memoir which describes the lives of Lucinda and her husband who have a deep desire to share their lives with a child of their own. They already are the parents of two healthy and energetic boys. One of the boys is their own flesh and blood while the other is an adopted son from Costa Rica. Yet Lucinda wishes to gift her loving husband with another child of their own, but sadly they lose their child; the new born Theo lives for only five hours before giving up his spirit. The author then analyses her own actions, emotions, feelings of utter hopelessness, and grief which she and her family faced with the death of their third son.
Five Hours is a tender recounting of a tragedy that only a heartless soul cannot associate with. The descriptions are crisp and minimal, making us focus on the real message of the memoir. Themes encountered in Five Hours are that of Sufism, Eastern philosophy, and totemic symbols which make the reader sit back and think over the birth and death of Theo. It has been also very well pointed out by Weatherby that ‘birth’ is not only life, but ‘birth and death’ too is life. Five Hours as a memoir is heart wrenching, and a must-read for all mothers and fathers who have lost their child in some way or other on this journey we call life. The memoir’s messages are the core pulse of this story and one can keep on learning from it through the eyes of a grieving mother. A beautiful composition of emotions indeed, Five Hours is a book to be lived and not just to be read.
