Evelyn Elsaesser-Valarino Talking with Angel: About Illness, Death and Survival Price £ 9.99 Pub Date 25 Aug 2005 ISBN 0863154921 Paperback, 208 Pages Available from Steiner Books for USA "This is the moving story of a young girl battling leukemia who realizes she is going to die. She receives hope and comfort through nightly conversations with her favourite doll, Angel, who helps her to embrace a new perspective on dying, and the possibility that consciousness could survive after death. Her fear of death is ultimately lifted by her new-found spiritual wisdom and by the account of a near-death experience told to her by a young companion. Evelyn Elsaesser-Valarino's extensive knowledge of near-death experiences informs this astonishing book. It will be of great benefit and comfort to those facing their own death, or for parents and carers of those with serious illnesses. It will also enrich anyone who is reflecting on this essential aspect of life". Foreword by Professor Kenneth Ring for “Talking with Angel about illness, death and survival” Plato taught us that the whole purpose of philosophy – his dialectic – was to prepare us for death. Nothing, in his view, was more important than this, and nothing has occurred in the more than two millennia since he lived to suggest otherwise. Death, and whatever may follow it, if anything, is still the great, seemingly unfathomable unknown, and the very thought of it continues to instill the deepest dread. And how much greater, then, the terror for someone actually facing an imminent descent into the void, the nothingness, of death. How can one possibly “prepare oneself” for the end of everything? Plato, of course, gave us his dialogues to help enlighten us, and Evelyn Elsaesser-Valarino, the author of this emotionally riveting book, following in this tradition, has now furnished us with what is effectively a kind of monologue on this same subject. But just as Plato’s dialogues make for engrossing reading because of the liveliness of the interplay between Socrates and his interlocutors, so, too, has Evelyn hit on a literary device that compels from the start our deep engagement: She has written what appears to be a novel, or perhaps one might say more modestly, “just a story,” but in fact it is something else entirely. Just what it is and what it aims to accomplish is my task to explain in this introduction. On the surface, Talking with Angel, is the story of a young girl, told in the first person, who has contracted a serious disease. But don’t be under any misconception, perhaps suggested by the title, that this is still another story of sentimental claptrap designed merely to tug at the reader’s heartstrings. Or that it is a book about the supernatural intervention of angelic beings who bring inspirational messages of spiritual uplift and bland comfort. No, something else is going on here as we follow our unnamed heroine’s journey during the course of her illness – a journey which, thanks to the author’s literary skill and psychological insight, we also find ourselves taking with her. Now, before going further, I need to note that of course it is not customary for a “novel” to require an introduction, and because this book has a novelistic form, it would be a disservice both to you and to the author if I were to divulge anything of the narrative line of the story that will unfold as soon as you start the book itself. However, because this book is not what it would at first blush appear to be, I can at least take a few liberties here to give you a sense of what this book is really about. To begin with, from the outset, we are in the mind of the narrator, the young girl, and from the outset, we are gripped by the drama of her illness. We enter her mindstream, her thoughts and feelings, as her illness develops. It is as if we become her diary – she is writing, she is confiding her innermost thoughts, to us. She draws us into her illness and its vicissitudes, and thus it is that we find ourselves sharing her journey and becoming intimately connected with her – and with the people in her life. Ultimately, her anguish becomes our own – but so, too, are the things she learns during the course of her struggle to understand and come to terms with what has happened to her. And these insights, the knowledge that comes to her, we come to see are the most important things. They are really what the book is about and what the book is designed to teach us. The girl could be anyone – hence she is not given a name and we know very little about her, not even her age – but at the same time, there is something special about this girl. At the beginning of the story, she is seemingly quite ordinary, but as her illness progresses, so does she – in her knowledge, in the depth of her character, and, ultimately, in the profound degree of spiritual wisdom she attains as she confronts the possibility of “the end of everything.” In short, this young girl goes through an accelerated course of personal and spiritual maturity so that by the time the book closes, she reminds of someone like Anne Frank and we realize that we have been privileged to read another young girl’s diary we will not soon forget. During the course of our own journey through this book, we also come to appreciate that it is not a novel at all, notwithstanding its memoir-like form and the predominance of its interior monologue (though there is spoken dialogue as well). No, this is essentially a book of wisdom teachings – specifically, teachings about death and the possibility that something profound transcends death and can cast its light back on the living so as to transform them. And, just as with Plato’s dialogues, so Talking with Angel is at bottom a mind-stretching philosophical undertaking dealing with one of the great perennial issues but from a completely new contemporary perspective. Much of Evelyn Elsaesser-Valarino’s life for over the past two decades has dealt with the phenomenon of the near-death experience, on which subject she is already recognized as an international authority. Her previous books and her many lectures have indeed gained for her a reputation as one of Europe’s leading figures in this field. So it is not surprising that it is the perspective of the near-death experience (or NDE, for short) that informs this book – and the life of her narrator (though in an unexpected way). But what Evelyn has done here is completely different from anything she has done before. Her first book on the subject, On the Other Side of Life, was a scholarly and entirely academic treatment of the subject and consisted chiefly of interviews with various professionals in a number of diverse fields of specialization in which they commented learnedly on the NDE from the perspective of their particular disciplines. In her next book, Lessons from the Light, on which she collaborated with me, the focus was on what interested readers could learn from studies of the NDE so that they might be able to apply their implications to their own lives. But in Talking with Angel, Evelyn departs completely from the world of the academy in order to tell a heartrendingly beautiful story from the heart that any person, even a child, could understand, relate to and learn from. Yet it is the special accomplishment of this book that everything essential about what the NDE teaches concerning what death is and about how life is meant to be lived from this understanding is conveyed so that any thoughtful reader can glean these insights and be transformed by them. Which brings us finally to the questions of who this book is written for and how to make use of it. Clearly, from what I’ve already indicated, this is not “a children’s book” or even one that is intended chiefly for teenagers or young adults – though readers from all of these groups could profit from it. Nor it is specifically intended for young persons who are ill or even facing death – though, again, such individuals are an obvious audience for a work of this kind. Similarly, one could highly recommend this book to parents of children suffering a serious illness since it provides such a vivid and compelling account of one young person’s ordeal with the trauma of such a condition – and yet, once more, this category of reader is not necessarily the one that is most likely to benefit from reading the book. I think you can see where I am heading with this. It’s not that this book is meant for any one type of individual or for those in a special set of exigent circumstances. We are all death-bound, and we are all clinging to life; we are all in the same condition and we all will undergo the same fate. This book is for anyone who wants to break free of the cold grip of death. This is a book about liberation and how to attain it. Who could not be interested in it? The book’s method is not didactic, though there are teachings embedded in it. It is instead experiential. You learn from identification, through the natural power of empathy. The story will carry you: all you need to do is allow yourself to enter into the narrator’s frame of reference, and together you two will do the necessary work. The narrator is not a fictional person – she is you. Becoming her, you will find yourself – and your way home. Kenneth Ring, Professor emeritus of Psychology, University of Connecticut USA LINK to author's homepage Remember we are NOT Doctors and have NO medical training. This site is like an Encylopedia - there are many pages, many links on many topics. Support our work with any size DONATION - see left side of any page - for how to donate. You can help raise awareness of CAM.