END OF LIFE and a MYSTERIOUS BOOK by Enid Richemont

There are so many books one reads for pleasure, and admiration for the writing, but there are some stories, not necessarily by well-known authors, which strangely settle in the psyche and just don't go away. One of these, title and author unknown to me at least (perhaps you can identify it for me?) and possibly picked up in a charity shop, came with the most extraordinary and unusual premise, and with an unforgettably moving ending which I won't reveal here as you may well know who the author is, but may not have read the book. The premise is based on the second nativity of a divine child, not necessarily Jesus, to a woman who is the very opposite of Mary - a twenty-first century and very sexually experienced woman in her late twenties? early thirties? drinks quite a lot, and smokes etc, who is visited in her bedroom by a very sexy male angel. At first she assumes he's a burglar?pervert? but it becomes clear that he's not because he's gentle and respectful (and very sexy) - it's just that his message to her makes no sense at all: she has been chosen to bear a very special Child. I mean, is this guy a nutcase? If this rings a bell with anyone, I'd love to know who wrote it, and how their career progressed afterwards because I've never forgotten it.

Having a book deeply resonate with a reader is so moving for the author, and a few months ago, this happened with one of my own earlier books at a time I'd assumed it had been totally forgotten. MY MOTHER'S DAUGHTER, a Young Adult novel, was written at a time when I was having quite serious problems with my own daughter, and first published by Random House. Set in mid-Wales, but also London, it involved a painful exploration of adolescence and also senility, as it featured an old lady who had hallucinations, and who was almost certainly suffering from dementia.

Someone had read the book over twenty years ago, and had never forgotten it, so they posted smatterings of the plot, author unknown, on Facebook, and miraculously this got through to me. Cue one extremely touched and flattered author, and very happy reader. The book is available as an e-book for the Kindle, if you're curious, and although there were two very different cover illustrations, one for the paperback, I used just this one (the hardback), as I so much disliked the paperback image.

As I am a dedicated supporter of Assisted Dying, I do often, in imagination, visit the endgame on behalf of myself. In literature, good endings are so important, so how might mine be? We'd all like to die in our sleep, but that blessing isn't automatically granted. Having experienced hospitals, they wouldn't be my place of choice, and as for the horror of care homes...

So if physical problems became life-destroying, what would I do? Go to Switzerland? Efficient but expensive. In my mind, I have long had a simmering short story plot which has someone en route to Switzerland is in a plane about to crash - how more intense contemplation on life that would be is hard to imagine. A DIY job, then? It would have to be efficient, swift and painless, and who would find the body? In one of my many fantasies, I book into the Ritz - a posh room, a final amazing meal, excellent wine, an effective terminal potion, and then - adios amigos. But then the poor, shocked chambermaid...

Someone wrote a science fiction-type short story many years ago, based on the idea that every human being might be genetically adapted to engineer his/her own death by activating a physical but hard-to -reach part of the body, but the sociological effect of that turned out to be that humanity lost all its creatives.

http://www.enidrichemont.org.uk