Every Single Minute

Úna, an Irish writer, is in the last stage of cancer and has come to Berlin for what she knows will be her only visit. Her companion is the unnamed narrator, who recalls her with blunt, unsentimental precision. She is not frightened of dying so much as frustrated that she cannot stop trying to make sense of her younger brother's tragic death.

As they wander the city together, Úna keeps returning to that loss. A performance of Verdi's opera Don Carlo becomes the moment when she sees how much she has sacrificed by letting memory steer her life. The novel is written by Hugo Hamilton, whose earlier memoir The Speckled People also examined a turbulent Irish family past.

The result is a friendship marked by warmth and humour, and by a reconciliation that arrives late but is earned. Readers who appreciate quiet, emotionally direct fiction about illness, grief and the choices people make at the end of their lives will find much here.